Approved For RqWse 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0100030002-8 NNW COVERSTORY r% moom Times on the rsychic Frontier Glendower: I can callspiritsfrorn the vasty deel). Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; . will they come Wien you do call for th ein ? - Hen ry / V For all the enormous achievements of science in posting the universe that mail inhabits, odd things keep slipping past the sentries. The tap on the shoul- der may be fleeting, the brush across the check gone sooner than it is felt, but the momentary effect is unmistakable: an unwilling suspension of belief in the HENRY GROSKI N SKY and memory? Could there be a para- normal world exempt from known nat- ural law? Both in America and abroad, those questions are being asked by increasing numbers of laymen and scientists litia- gry for answers. The diverse manifes- tations of interest in so-called psychic phenomena are everywhere: P@ In the U.S., The Secret Life of Plants becomes a bestseller by offering an astonishing and heretical thesis: greenery can feel the thoughts of humans. P@ At Maimonides, Medical Center in New York City, the image of a paint- T, rational. An old friend suddenly remem- ing is transmitted by ESP, and seems to Mitchell, who while on the Apollo 14 bered, and as suddenly the telephone enter the dreams of a laboratory sub- moon mission conducted telepathy ex- rings and the friend is on the line. A ject sleeping in another room. perinlents with friends on earth, founds vivid dream that becomes the morning to, In England, a poll of its readers the Institute of Noctic Sciences. His new reality. The sense of bumping into one's by the New Scientist indicates that near- mission: investigate occurrences that self around a corner of time, of having ly 70% of the respondents (mainly sci- will not yield to rational explanation. done and. said just this, in this place, entists and technicians) believe in the P- In London, Arthur Koestler ex- once before in precisely this fashion. A possibility of extrasensory perception. amines psychic research with the zeal stab of anguish for a distant loved one, 0- At the University of California, of the believer. Koestler, one ofthe fore- and next day, the telegram. Psychologist Charles Tart reports that most explicators of Establishment sci- Hardly a person lives who can deny his subjects showed a marked increase ence (The Sleepwalkers, The Act of Cre- some such experience, some such seem- it) ESP scores after working with his new ation), speaks of "synchronized" events ing visitation from across the psychic teaching machine. that lie outside the expectations of prob- frontier. For most of man's history, those 0- In Los Angeles, a leaf is cut in ability. In anecdotes of foresight and ex- intrusions were mainsprings of action, half, then photographed by a special trasensory perception, in the repetition the very life (if Greek epic and biblical process. The Picture Miraculously S11OWS of events and the strange behavior of saga, of medieval tale and L'astern the "aura" or outline of the whole leaf. random samplings, Koestler spots what chronicle. Modern science and psychol- k- In Washington, the Defense De- he calls the roots of coincidence. In his ogy have learned to explain much of' nartment's Advanced Research Projects unforgettable metaphor, modern scien- what was once inexplicable, but mys- Agency assigns a team to investigate Lists are "Peeping Tonis at the keyhole teries remain. The workings of the mind seemingly authentic psychic phenome- oreternity.,, That keyhole is StUffed with still resist rational analysis; reports of na at the Stanford Research Institute. ancient biases toward the materialistic psychic phenomena persist. Are they all accident, illusion? Or are ApiRrOM00 io. Oil both ad* _)k onse- J 6 p @aq 1* FQrIWLA2& 4,141,34161" 9ftyc%0149 , @,,qg field planes and dimensions of experience laymen arid scientists alike by bending of psychic research. Once skeptics aban- T N ME, MARCH A, 197A Ar spoons and keys apparently with the force of his thoughts. I@ In the Philippines, Tennis Star Tony Roche is relieved of painful "ten- nis elbow" when ail incision is made and three blood clots are apparently re- moved by the touch of a psychic healer, who knows nothing of surgery orof mod- ern sanitation. o@ In the U.S., the number of col- leges offering courses in parapsychology increases to more than 100. ),- In the U.S.S.R., researchers file reports on blindfolded women who can "see" colors with their hands. ip- I n California, ex-Astronaut Edgar DEVICE SET UP TO RECORD OUT-OF-BODY TRIP AT AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH Questionable procedures costumed in the prim gown of laboratory respectability. F@ @ I. , 1@ : . i f ,i:x I : .@a I :@ 11: Approved or F?pjpaIse.,2,a-.P CLOCKWISE FROM LLFT: At Durham's Psychical Re- Medical Center in New York City: Artist and Psychic Ingo search Foundation, Rohert Morris displays test in which Swann with painting completed after his -OUt of body" ad- SL)bjCCt OUtSik Of rOOM '1111ILMICCs- movement of a cati VelltIll-e ill OUter spam gerbil in tests for precognitive pow- sensory-isolaLion and LeICpaLhy eXI)erimem at Mairnorlides ers at The Institute for Parapsychology in Durharn, N.C. Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0100030002-8 don those prejudices, says Koestle,- 'ley sonic extent in the exi stence of some -nitted to finding phenomena. And few will be free tA *V6dsFF"lRQg0b 2003/0W,1i8iioCWPAWWPQ0767 0 OM0002ABcontrols necessary in a . pw ,RAO the forms ai hat y s 4 now categories. -c open to wide debate. S Id in which deception, conscious or C That exploration is already being Psychologist Gardner Murphy, profes- unconscious, is all too familiar." conducted by a number of serious para- sor at the District of Columbia's George Daniel Cohen, former managing ed- normalists in a wide range of disciplines. Washington University, and a dean of itor of Science Digest and author of the In his Foundation for the Research on psychic researchers, "It may well turn debunking volume Myths of the Space the Nature of Man, in Durharn, N.C., out that parapsychology will be a mul- Age, remains unpersuaded by what lie the grand old man of paranormal stud- tidisciplinary thing, owing much to psy- sees through the Koestlerian keyhole. ics, J.B. Rhine (see box page 70), still chiatry, neurology ... medicine, bio- "After decades of research and exper- keeps watch on test animals for precog- ch-emistry, social sciences." one of inients," Cohen observes, *'tile parapsy- nitive powers. At the nearby Psychical parapsychology's most famous propo- chologists are not one step closer to ac- Research Foundation, William Roll and nents, in fact, is an anthropologist: Mar- ceptable scientific proof of psychic a research staff investigates "survival af- garet Mead. It was her passionate ad- phenomena, Examining the slipshod ter bodily death." In studies with a "sen- vocacy that helped give the Parapsycho- work of the modern researchers, one be- sitive" and his pet cat, Roll finds ev- logical Association its greatest claim to gins to wonder if any proof exists." idence for a human ability "to leave" legitimacy. After several vain attempts The criticism that psychics find VALERY SHUSTOV to enter the eminent American Asso- hardest to counter comes not from sci- ciation for the Advancement of Science, crilists but from conjurers. Theoretically, the P.A. won membership in 1969-af- magicians have no place in serious sci- ter a speech by Mead. Her argument: ence. But they are entertainers whose "The whole history of scientific advance business it is to deceive; thus they feel is full of scientists investigating phenom- that they are better qualified to spot chi- ena that the Establishment did not be- cancry than scientists, who can be woe- lieve were there. I submit that we vote fully naive about the gimmicks and tech- in favor of this association's work." The niques that charlatans may use for final vote: 6 to I in f, avor of adinission. mystical effects. James Randi, who ap- Immense Claims. As parapsychol- pears oil television as "tile Amazing ability, so do its Randi," duplicates many of Uri Geller's ogy gains new respect, -rency: "psi" for any achievements with a combination of terms gain wide cui psychic phenomenon; "clairvoyance" sleight of hand, misdirected attention for the awareness of events and objects and patented paraphernalia, then calls that lie outside the perimeters of the five them feats of clay. "Scientists who fall senses; "out-of-body" experience for for the paranormal go through the most seeming to journey to a place that may devious reasoning," Randi says. "For- be miles from the body; "psychokinesis" tunes are squandered annually in pur- for the mental ability to influence phys- suit of mystical forces that are actually ical objects; "precognition" for the tile result of clever deceits. The nioney foreknowledge of events, from the fall would be better spent investigating the of dice to the prediction of political as- tooth fairy orSanta Claus. There ismorc A sassinations; and the wide-ranging term evidence for their reality," mi, for extrasensory perception. Pure Deception. Charles Rcyn- For all its articulate spokesmen and olds, editor and member of the Psychic scientific terminology, however, the new Investigating Committee of the Amer- world of psi still has a serious credibil- ican Society of Magicians, agrees. A@, ity problem, One reason is that like any "When evaluating the research, we have growth industry or pop phenomenon, it found that the researcher's will to be- has attracted a fair share of hustlers. In- lieve is all powerful. It's a will that has deed, tile psych ic-phenomena boom nothing to do with religion; there are may contain more charlatans and con- Marxists, atheists, agnostics who cling jurers, more nalfs and gullibles than can stubbornly to the ancient faith in be found on the stage and in the au- black magic. Only now it's called 'the dience of ten Ringling Brothers circus- paranormal.' es. The situation is not hel ed at all by That faith is nowhere more evident K. p 71 the "proofs" that fail to satisfy tradition- than in the U.S.S.R., which has been RUSSIAN FINGER-READING TEST al canons of scientific investigations, De- beset in recent years with controversial Bosicaily Show biz. spite the published discoveries, despite sensitives. One, Ninel Kulagina, was ap- the indefatigable explorations of the 'praised as capable of causing objects to the body and "visit" the animal. At the psychic researchers, no one has yet been float in mid-air. As Martin Gardner University of Virginia Medical School, able to document. experiments suffi- notes, "She is a pretty, plump, dark- Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson also studies ciently to convince the infidel. For eyed little charlatan who took the stage the plausibilitics of reincarnation. many, doubt grows larger with each ex- name of Ninel because it is Lenin spelled At the Division of Parapsychology travagant claim. backward. She is no more a sensitive and Psychophysics of the Maimonides To Science and Mathematics Atia- than Kreskin, and like that an'iiable Medical Center, Dr. Montague Ullman lyst Martin Gardner (Relativity Jor the American television humbug, she is directs tests in which message senders Million, Ambidextrous Universe), an- basically show biz." Indeed, Ninel "think" images into the brains of sleep- nouncernents of psychic phenomena be- has been caught cheating more than ing subjects. "If we had adequate fund- long not to the march of science but to ing," says Ullinan, "we could have a the pageant of publicity. "Uri Geller, major breakthrough in this decade." In The Secret Life of Plants, telepathy, ESP, U.C.L.A. Psychologist Thelma Moss ex- Connecticut, Businessman Robert Nel- the incomplete conclusions of Koestler plores the mysteries of Kirlian photog- son directs the Central Premonitions -all seem part of a new uncritical cn- raphy-picturcs believed by some to Registry, meticulously recording the thusiasm for pseudo science," says Gard- show the "aura" of living things. Insert: prophecies of the dreams and visions ner. "The claims are immense, the proof Ki rlian photos of normal elbow (left) and that people send him. nonexistent. The researchers, almost sarne elbow while experiencing nffld All of these researchers believe to without exception, are emotionally com- electrical shock. 66 Approved For Release 2003/04/18: CIA-RDP96-00787ROGGIO00HO0,2-8--- INSERT. DR. T, MOSS III KENDALL JOHNSON eLOCK\@ISE FROM LL4pprowAxdFor.Reigosec2DO3/G4fgPAiQlArROPiN~,-QO,7,87,~WLO-IOPPA~QQ92-s&I fraud the Menninger Foundation prepares a biofeedback test for a Who dUplicates psychic feats with a combination of sleight- yogi on bed of' nails: Ex-AsLronaut Edgar Mitchell, who of-hand. psychology and theatrical gimmicks checks set of experienced "altered state of COlISCiousness- ill OLIter space, -ESP- cards: Yrinidadian -sensitive- performing card clair- 'it his IIISLitLite for NoeLiC SCieliCeS in Palo Alto, Cal.: voyance experiment at The 111SOLLItC for Parapsychology. CIA-RDP96-00787ROO01 00030002-8 BEHAVIOR on:e by Soviet Est 16%"t2oo&ffi4lt8rp(CIA4.RDPO6400787&W 03A002sty mects the in- AQ;hM bAWP ft t Russ s - Anothei , a s l y i &R.J.'s tests were indeed conducted , S" . vestigators from S. R.I., he con fesses that ova, call "read" with her fingertips while with what University of Oregon Profes- outer-space intelligence directs his securely blindfolded. James Randi, an- sor Ray Hyman calls "incredible slop- work, But the S.R.I. scientists are not alyzing photographs of Kuleshova, pincss," then other disturbing questions taken aback. One, Russell Targ, plac- promptly announced that her act was may be raised. Assigned by the Depart- idly remarks, "The things you are tell- ,, a fraud." To prove his point, he invit- ment of.Defense to report on the won- ing us agree very well with things that ed testers to blindfold him with pizza drous happenings at S.R.I., Hyman, ac- Hal [S.R.1, Collcag@ie Harold PuthoM dough,a mask and a hood. Then lie pro- companied by George Lawrence, DOD and I believe but we can't prove." Adds ceeded to drive a car in traffic, "I won't projects manager for the Advanced Re- Astronaut Ed Mitchell: -Uri, you're not tell you how I did it," lie says. "But it search Projects Agency, caught Geller saying anything to us we don't in sonic was not parapsychological ly. It was pUrC in some outright deceptions. way already sense or understand." The deception, just as hers was." Such rev- Unhappily for Geller, his powers text raises some troubling questions. Is etations have not deterred the parapsy- have a tendency to vanish in the pres- Pullarich indeed in touch with what he chologists in the U,S.S.R. or elsewhere. ence of sleight-of-hand men. Oil the To- calls "my editor in the sky"? Is his ac- They freely concede that many of their itight Sliow, where Johnny Carson in- count of the S.R.I. meeting as true as subjects do sometimes cheat, but still stituted airtight controls at Randi's his reasonably accurate report of Uri's may have paranormal powers, suggestion, nothing that Geller attempt- meeting a year ago with the editors of In and out of the laboratory, many ed (during an embarrassing 20 Minutes) TIME? If it is, why have tile S.R.I. sci- paranormalist, investigators conduct ex- seemed to work. After a group of Eng- entists failed to mention Uri Geller's periments that mock rigorous and log- lish magicians made plans to catch him contacts with outer space? Are they ical procedure. Claims are made, and DILL EPPRIOG9 properly fearful of that most the burden of proof is shifted to the irrefutable antidote to non- doubter. Ground rules are laid down by sense: laughter? Or were the psychic subject and are all too they, as they now claim, eagerly accepted by his examiner. If tile merely "humoring" their venture proves unsuccessful, a wide subject? range of excuses are proffered: an un- Almost as impressive as believer provided hostile vibratiolm the P@ x Geller's rise to fame is the , " subject was not receiving well; negative : phenornenal success of The influences were present; testing rules Secret Life of Plants (Har- were too restrictive. It is all reminiscent per & Row; $8.95), a vol- of the laws in Through the Looking- ume that is unaccountably Glass, where people approach objects by placed on the nonfiction walking away from them. And it cre- shelves of bookstores. The ates an atmosphere in which even a gen- work of two occult journal- uine paranornial subject might have a ists, Secret Life is an anthol- hard time certifying hisabilities. ogy of the absurd, costumed No one has contributed more to tile in the prim gown of labo- paxanormal explosion than Uri Geller, ratory respectability. In it the handsome, 26-year-old Israeli for- are researchers like Cleve mer nightclub magician who seems Backster, a lie-detector cx- equally adept at telepathy, psychokinc- pert who attached the ter- sis and precognition. "I don't want to 10 minals of his machines to spend my whole life in laboratories," plants. Behold! The vogeta- Geller recently told TIME London Cor- Lion reacted to his thoughts. respondent Lawrence Malkin. "I'vejust . . . . . Most scientists have greeted done a whole year at Stanford Research the experiments with open Institute [TIME, March 121. Now I'll go skepticism-with good rea- on to other countries, and let them see son. After his plants would if they know what it is I've got," not respond for a visiting Death Threats. At the Stanford PSYCHOLOGIST TART WORKING ESP MACHINE Canadian plant physiolo- Research Institute Geller successfully Searching for a wider kind of self. gist, for example, Backster worked most of his repertoire of mir- offered an interesting hy- acles. In a film made by S.R.I., Geller in the act during a British tour, Geller pothesis: the plants "fainted" because picks the can containing an object from abruptly canceled out, citing mysterious they sensed that she routinely incincr- a group of identical empty cans, inflLI- "dea.th threats." ated her own plants and then weighed ences laboratory scales, reproduces In the long run, however, Geller's the ashes after her experiments. drawings scaled in opaque envelopes, friends may well be more damaging to Backster is the essence of conscrva- deflects a magrietonicter and correctly his cause than are his detractors. This tism compared with the book's more ad- calls the upper face of a die in a closed spring the reputable old firm of DOLI- venturous researchers. A New Jersey box-eight times in eight tries. If Gel- bleday will publish a book entitled Uri electronics buff, Pierre Paul Sauvin, at- ler's prowess with dice is indeed para- by Dr. Andrija PUllarich, who brought tached a Rube Goldbergian machine to normal, it raises serious and disturbing Geller to the U.S. from Israel. In a crude his plants, and then spent the weekend mishmash of Hission: Impossible, 2001 with his girt friend at a place 80 miles and the James Bond series, Puharich away. lie found that even at that dis- CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: (author of a previous volume oil the psy- tance the plants had responded to his Psychic Uri Geller, whose reputed abil- chedelic effects of mushrooms) soberly sexual relations with the girl. The tone iLy to bend objects with his mind has describes his adventures with Geller. oscillators went "right off the top," he stirred sharp debate; ESP test at the From outer space, highly intelligent says, at the moment of orgasm. American Society for Psychical Re- computers called SPECTRA communi- In Japan, Ken Hashimoto, another search; Lie Detector Expert Cleve Back- Cate through taped messages, which dis- polygraph expert, discovered that his ster with plant that he believes can appear. "We can only talk to you cactus could count and add up to 20. "read" his thoughts; in psychokinesis through Uri's power," says the mystical George De La Warr, a British engineer, test, subject tries to influence sequence voice. "It is a shame that for such a bril- insisted that young plants grew better if in which bulbs will light. liant mind we cannot contact you di- their "mother" were kept alive. Ironi- pr @Lk9 @gp?.Qp -RDP96-00787ROO01 00030002 OA,A -8 A qL CIA 69 Ap%R 0 pla(gy C404 SPREAD, (TOP) DON SNYDER-H ) HENRY GROSKINSKY. OPPOSITE PAGE! (TOP LEFT) DEN MARTIN, GROSKiNSKY BEHAVIOR cally, the aA# o6@tpp#Rwiedgle 20013/04/1-8-t C194RDF199900M - is." Stanford Professor ' selves to sot c significant facts about Moss, who has taken more Kirlian pho- illiam Tiller, an enthusiast of the botany. Plan ts do respond physiological- tographs and done more experimental paranornial, is more assured about the ly to certain sound waves. Talking to a work with them than anyone outside technical cause of Kirlian phenomena plant may indeed make it healthier, be- Russia. on film. -"What we're looking at," fie cause it thrives on the carbon dioxide ex- Moss, a former Broadway actress, maintains, "is cold electron discharge." haled by the speaker. found her interest in parapsychological Sickly Tissue. Says L. lerome Stan- Many psychics and their followers phenomena kindled after I.,Sl) therapy. 1011, aLlLhOr or a Forthcoming book oil believe that paranormal powers may be "Froin the first,'* she recalls, "I intend- auras and Kirlian photographyl "Per- dependent on mysterious auras or "cn- ed to specialize in parapsychology be- liaps some day the technique "ill bo a orgy flows," phenomena that they say cause of the glimpses of psychic phe- valuable diagnostic tool. Maybe sick can be recorded by Killian photogra- nornena I experienced during the L.SD people do have different 'auras.' But as phy. The technique, developed in the treatments. But I certainly don't feel the of now, there is no assurance that it is at late 1930s by Russian Electronics Ex- need to use drugs any more ... When all useful." Though not accusing Kirlian pert Semyon Kirlian and his wife Va- you've gotten the message, you hang up researchers of faking effects, Stanton lentina, involves introducing a small the phone." For Moss, the message is notes that the famous "phantom lear' is amount of high-voltage, high-frequency that Kirlian photography clearly dem- easy to duplicate by double-exposing the current into the subject and recording onstraLes a human aura. "We have done film, first with the whole leaf, again af- the subsequent discharge on photo- work with acupuncturists and [psychic] ter a portion has been removed, and that graphic film. The result is a photograph healers," she says, "and we find that the different voltages and conditions can showing all "energy body"--a weird corona of the healer becomes intense be- change the picture in incalculable ways. aura-around the plant, aninial or hu- fore healing, and then afterward is more " "Working with advanced equipment mail part being photographed. relaxed and less strong. We think we're , fie says, "I could produce Kirlian effects Soon, Kirlians claimed that photo- looking at a transfer of energy frorn the Lhat would astound the unsophisticated, graphing a portion of a leaf, for exam- healer to the injured person." and that includes a lot of scientists and ple, would produce the aura of the en- Others are less certain. Writing in physicists. Remember, electronics and tire leaf oil film. Sonic psychics claim the Photographic Society of Anterica photography are two very complicated that in time the aura of a missing limb journal, Bill Zalud concluded, "All spec- iniomt be discernible with Kirlian pho- ulation hinges on obtaining photographs tography. Today the process is an in- of normal tissue patterns for compar- Legral part of paranornial exploration. ative purposes and, so far, no one has In the U.S. the ie, ading proponent of the really determined what a normal Kir- I W-A@ 7 ALong History of Hoaxes The first professional organization to Study paranornial phenomena was the British Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882. Aniong its membership were prominent scholars and scientists -men of unimpeachable credentials and high moral character. They soon discovered and enthusiastically reported on [lie telepathic abilities of five little girlS, daLlghtel'S of [lie Rev, A.M. Crecry, The niontalist MillClulil,1111 was at hand. Six years later, the girls were caught cheating and shamefacedly admitted that they had fooled the investigators. They were the first in a long series of de- ceivers of scientists. The society's next major project was an investigation of two "Scilsitives" from Brighton, G.A. Smith and Douglas Blackburn. Smith would allow himself to be blindfolded, his cars to be plugged, his body to be thoroughly blanketed; yet somehow the thoughts of Blackburn reached him. This time, it seemed, the S.P.R. had really justified its existence. When Smith left the S.P.R. ill 1892, no other comparable sensitive could be found. Still, the members had seen the telepathy performed with their own eyes; the evidence was held acceptable. It was not until 1908 that Blackburn ad- mitted deceit. "The whole of these al- leged experiments were bogus," he later wrote. The remainder of his statement has echoed to this day: IOur hoax I orig- inated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training Could be deceived when seeking for evidence ill Support Of a theory they were wishful to establish." The American Society for Psychical Research, organized with the help of Philosopher William James in 1885, suf- fered similar embarrassments. Yet it pursued its quarry with vigor. As James had noted, "TO Upset the conclusion that all crows are black, there is no need to seek dernons(ration that no crow is black; it is sufficient to produce one white crow." But after 25 years of read- ing psychic literature and witnessing phenomena, James admitted that he was "theoretically no further than I was at the beginning, and I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the 70 Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA Creator has eternally intended this de- parture of nature to remain baffling." Other researchers had not been humble or uncertain. Late in the cen- tury, a self-styled sensitive named Flenry Slade toured the U.S. and Europe mak- ing objects vanish and swinging com- pass needles without the aid of a mag- net. lie was so convincing that a German scientist published a book, Transcendental Physics. devoted to Slade's accomplishments. Again, the psychic Millennium seemed imminent, But in his biography, A Magician Among the Spirits, I tarry Iloudini reported that the conjurer was simply a fraud with a dazzling technique; Slade later coil- fessed that it was indeed all an act. TIME, MARCH 4, 1974 EXPERIMENTER J.B. RHINE VOLUNTEERS COMING OF THE FAIRIES 000 00030 02 @9RRJP fgel @ '19c'tA0;sLDP96-00T187F fields. Mix them and a#RRqRy%F19r Pftp is I di F ? i sue te s 0 IS r t 2l will remain in the dark." frorn Tony's hand ... I wanted to have , , res ria m . gence as- suring hi Arigo was not hurt in his The most irresponsible and odious valid medical tests performed on it. The fatal car accident in 1971: "There was no niche in the world of the paranormal is tests, conducted in Seattle, showed that pain. He left his body before the crash." occupied by the psychic healers, who the tissue was 'consistent with origin No amount of demonstrable fraudu- cannot operate legally in the U.S. but from a small aninial ... there is no ev- lence, no exposure of the fake, the ma- lure unfortunate Americans overseas idence in any of this tissue to suggest nipulator, the unscrupulous, ever seems with claims of spectacular cures. Diag- that this represents metastatic carcino- capable of dissuading the true believer nosing illnesses and locating diseased or- ma frorn the breast of the patient.' " in paranorniality. James Fadiman, of gans by purely psychic means, they per- Tom Valentine, author of a book on per- the Stanford School of Engineering, be- form operations by plunging their hands haps the best known of the psychic sur- lieves that "most (but not all) para- through what appear to be deep inci- geons, Tony Agpaoa., documents the ex- psychologist demonstrators are also sions to grasp and remove sickly tissue. perience of a Mrs. Raymond Steinberg frauds," then gives the classic rationale: In the Philippines, currently the center of Two Rivers, Wis. Tony "made a ma- "Look at it this way. You think you have for psychic surgery, a number of con- jor production" of removing a piece of powers of clairvoyance, and finally you jurers use sleight of hand and buckets metal and several screws that had been become a celebrity because of it. You're of blood and animal parts to work their Surgically placed in her hip after an au- on the stage or in an experimental sit- wonders. Surrounded by adherents who tomobile accident. X rays later showed uation and sometimes your powers fail have been "cured," the ill-educated and that Agpaoa had removed nothing. you. They do very often for most of these often filthy surgeons perform "opera- True Believer. But the psychics, guys. So what do they do? They cheat," tions"-slashes of the epidermis, knives and those who profit from them, remain Robert Bencliley once separated in the eye cavity, fingers in the abdornen undaunted. In a few months, the respect- people into two categories: those who -sometimes painlessly and always with able publishing firm of Thomas Y. separate people into two categories and great flourish. Crowell will publish the story of yet an- those who do not. Parapsychologist Ger- As one witness to such "surgery" de- other psychic healer, the late great Bra- trude Schmeidler of New York's City scribes it: "The healer pulled some tis- zilian Arigo, Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. College is in the first category. Her stud- sue from the area of the 'operation' ... The author: John Fuller, whose pro-fly- ics show that on the issue of para- ing-saucer books Incident at Exeter and psychology her subjects divide into be- The Interrupted Journey were big sellers lieving sheep and doubting goats. The ELIOT "'0"" during the UFO craze of the 1960s. The sheep almost invariably score higher afterword is written by Geller Biogra- in tests of paranormal powers. Will plier Puharich, who in Vri incidentally the sheep ever convince the ruminating Perhaps parapsychology's niost gul- lible proponent was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the superrationalist detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle re- mains the greatest proof that intelli- gence and scruple cannot compete with naivctd and the desire to accept the par- anormal as demonstrable fact. After the death of his son in the Great War, he turned to spiritualism for solace. This led, in time, to investigations of spirits, and eventually to little winged creatures in the bottonis of gardens. In his 1922 volume The Com ing of the Fairies, Doyle rcproduced photographs of a tiny gob- tin and elves caught by a child's earn- cra,The pictures were manifestly staged@ the entire project made all but the blind- VIME, MARCH 4,1974 est believers wince. One who did not was a young American botanist named J.B. Rhine. After an inspiring Doyle lecture on spiritualism, Rhine and his wife Louisa immersed themselves in lit- crature published by the Society for Psychical Research. When Rhine later joined the faculty of Duke University, he began. a lifelong devotion to psychic research. It was he who coined the terms extrasensory perception and psi (for psychic phenomena); it was he who gave his specialty an academic imprimatur by compiling Mountains of statistics about psychic subjects who could "read" cards that they could not see. From the start, Rhine was criticized for juggling numbers. (Subsequent re- searchers have also used questionable procedures, citing "negative ESP" when the number of correct guesses fall be- low average and "displacement" when subjects call the card before or after the one they are trying toguess.) H.L. Menc- ken surnmarized the early views of the dubious when he wrote, "In plain lan- guage, Professor Rhine segregates all those persons who, in guessing the cards, enjoy noteworthy runs of luck, and then adduces those noteworthy runs of luck as proof that they must possess inyste- riOLIS powers." Rhine tightened his lab- oratory conditions in the i930s, and much of the criticism withcred-but so did his ESP stars. In the 1960s a psychic superstar came along in the person of Ted Scrios, a hard-drinking, onetime bellhop from Chicago. Serios' gift was definitely off- beat: lie produced pictures inside a Po- laroid camera using nothing but his mind and a little hollow tube he called his "gismo." Reporters Charles Reyn- olds and David Eisendrath, who ob- served Scrios at work in Denver, had little trouble constructing a device that could be secreted inside a gismo to pro- duce all of Scrics' effects. The instru- ment contained a Minuscule lens at one end and a photographic transparency at the other. When the device was pointed at the camera lens and the shutter was clicked, an image was recorded on film. The Reynolds- Eisend rath story was printed in Popular Photography and many of Serios' followers were shattered. Again the millennium was deferred. 71 IN EARLY ESP TEST (1940) TED SERICS PROJECTING PICTURES BEHAVIOR goats? Will the goats ever UndCrr f 19 bi 00_ 6"0@7iAJnjversity of Virgin- MkCTg4 414S@,Mf' ' #(VRQr2 @QvgWeF-piSA*4se,'@ y c 0 a the faith of AW e W Zli th T d , l ) e n l ngs prove epress- y events have occurred. tive researchers. To date, those demon- i ,@ negative, it is unlikely that acad- Just a few years ago what smug strations have not been made. emics or foundations would encourage Western rationalist would have accred- Any close examiner of psychic in. more chairs, or promote further psychic ited acupuncture? Yet the ethnocentric vestigators and reporters will find a new investigations. prejudice seemed to disappear almost at. meaning for Koestler's roots of coinci- In a way, it is rather a pity that the a stroke when the Western world dence, A loose confederacy of parapsy- sheep cannot get together with the goals. learned or James Reston's appendix op- chologists parodies the notion of the sci- At the very least, the paranormal es- cration. The Now York Thlies colurnniSL entific method. I-larold Puthoff, one of tablishirient has questioned the dognia, submitted to acupuncture after surgery the two S.R.I. investigators of Uri Gel- emphasized the ignorance and Under- on a tiip to China in 1971; thereafter, ler, is singled out in The Secret Life of lined the arrogance of modern medicine the unorthodox method was examined Plants as a reputable scientist who has and science. Indeed, modern doctors throughout the U.S. Today acul)II11CILLIrC been experimenting with the response.. have scarcely breached the frontiers of is Linder intense study at several med- of one chicken egg to the breaking of an- the mind. Science has all too frequently ical centers. Although some of (lie ben- other. lie is also a promoter of the bi- destroyed the layman's sense of wonder eficial effects of "paranormal" medicine zarre and controversial cult of Scientol- by seeking materialistic explanations for have been acknowledged by Western ogy, which Ingo Swann, another psychic all phenomena. scientists, they are still at NATIONAL TATTILrR As C.P. Snow says: "Scientists re- a loss to explain it. It was 'T" gard it as a major intellectual virtue to not long ago that most know what not to think about." Corn- -ibL]Icd the Americans aLti plains one S.R.I. spokesman: "The so feats of Eastern yogis to ciety we live in doesn't give you per- clever fakery. Yet the new mission to have psychic abilities. That Western experimentation D, is one reason that so much talent is sup- with biofeedback* has j pressed." As Martin Gardner believes, % shown skeptics that the "Modern science should indeed arouse mind can indeed control t' V in all of us a humility before the irn- what are normally invol- mensity of the unexplored and a toler- untary bodily functions. ance for crazy hypotheses." The Menninger FOUnda- As for the parapsychologists who in Topeka, Kans., tion make many of those hypotheses, they reports incontrovertible could learn the most valuable weapon proof that Subjects trained in the arsenal of the truth seeker: doubt. by bioreedback can con One hundred and fifty years ago Charles trol their blood circulation Lamb observed that credulity was the and lower the temperature child's strength but the adult's weakness. of the parts of their bod- That observation is even more valid to- ies at will; migraine head- ignorant research day, when shoddy ot -in be literally aches c, -iacy to the most used to lend legitin ancient wished away. The, WO`! extravagant tenets of the psychic , yogic mythic skills sud- movement. within the V denly seem That is not to say that parapsychol- grasp of everyone. A--- ogy ought to be excluded from serious is it not possible that Scrutiny. Some first-rate minds have thoughts-like TV pro- been attracted to it: Freud, Einstein, granis-can be transmit- 3 Jung, Edison. The paranorinal may ex- tcd front one brain to an- p ist, against logic, against reason, against `Z4 other'? And if enough i present evidence and beyond the Stan- energy can be generated PSYCHIC SURG EON OPERATING IN PHILIPPINES dard criteria of empirical proof. Perhaps by the brain, why should Sometimes p ainlessly, always with flourish. there uc reasons why the roll of the dice it not influence the roll of and turn of the cards sometimes appear dice? Or make a plant respond? tested by S.R.I., also practices. William to obey the bettor's will. Perhaps the in an epoch when the new physics Targ, a Putnarn executive, recently con- laws of probability are often suspended. posits black holes in the universe an([ tracted to publish Astronaut Ed Mitch- Perhaps Geller and other magicians can particles that travel faster than the speed ell's forthcoming book, Psychic Explo- indeed force metal to bend merely be- of light, and has already confirmed the ration, A Challenge for Science. At the cause they will it. Perhaps photographs existence of such biitrrc, things as neu- signing, Targ stated that "the real race can be projected by the mind. Perhaps trinos that have no mass or charge, an- now between the Russians and its is in plants think. timatter and quasars, why should any the area of sciences like usil." Mitch- Perhaps not. phenomenon be assumed impossible? ell's Institute of Noetic Sciences helped There is only one way to tell: by a What is wrong with Physicist Sit, James to fund S.R.f.'s Geller research, which thorough examination of the phenom- Jeans' attempt to give coherence to an was conducted largely by Puthoff and ena by those who do not express an a unruly cosmos: "The universe begins to Russell Targ, who happens to be Editor priori belief. By those for whorn proba- took more and mom like a great thought Targ's son. bility is not a mystique but a compre- than a great machine"? The questionable connections of hensible code. By those who have noth- The psychic adherent's reply is sirn- many psychic researchers, in addition ing to lose but their skepticism. Until ple: anything is possible, But simply say- to the paucity of objectively verifiable re- such examiners are allowed to play the ing that it is so and then Supporting the SLilts in their work, has made it difficult psychic game, it is unlikely that the contention with shoddy or downright to raise funds for research; parapsychol- paranornial will escape the ambiguous fraudulent evidence, is not enough. Psy- ogists barely squeak by with money from utterance against it in Leviticus: "Do not chic pherion-Lena cannot be accepted on a few foundations and gifts and encour- turn to mediums or wiyards@ do not seek agement from occasional philanthro- them out, to be defiled by them . . ." And *A process by which one can )earn Io control in- voluntary bodily functions (such as heartbeat) pists like Stewart Mott and Manhattan that most wondrous and mysterious of through the visual or aural monitoring (if physi- Realtor John Tishman. There is only entities, the human mind, will remain ological da(a. one academic chair on parapsychology an Underdeveloped country. 72 Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0100030002-8 TIME, MARCH 4,1974