BOOM TIMES ON THE PSYCHIC FRONTIER

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r% H%
Boom Times on the Psychos Frontier
Glendower: I can call spirits frorn the
vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can
any man;
But will they come Wien you do call
for then, ?
-Ilenry /V
For all the enormous achievements
of science in posting the universe that
man inhabits, odd things keep slipping
past the sentries. The tap on the shoul-
der may be fleeting, the brush across the
cheek gone sooner than it is felt, but
the momentary effect is unmistakable:
an unwilling suspension of belief in the
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 hun-
gry for answers. The diverse manifes-
tations of interest in so-called psychic
phenomena are everywhere:
- 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.
- At Maimonides Medical Center in
New York City, the image of a paint-
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.
rational. An old friend suddenly remem-
bered, and as suddenly the telephone
rings and the friend is on the line, A
vivid dream that becomes the morning
reality. The sense of bumping into one's
self around a corner of time, of having
done and. said just this, in this place,
once before in precisely this fashion. A
stab of anguish for a distant loved one,
and next day, the telegram.
Hardly a person lives who can deny
some such experience, some such seem-
ing visitation from across the psychic
frontier. For most of man's history, those
intrusions were mainsprings of action,
the very life of Greek epic and biblical
saga, of medieval talc and '.astern
chronicle. Modern science and psychol-
ogy have learned to explain much of
what was once inexplicable, but mys-
teries remain. The workings of the mind
still resist rational analysis; reports of
psychic phenomena persist. Are they all
accident, illusion? Or are ApprQiS?ld
planes and dimensions of experience
ing is transmitted by ESP, and seems to
enter the dreams of a laboratory sub-
ject sleeping in another room.
- In England, a poll of its readers
by the New Scientist indicates that near-
ly 70% of the respondents (mainly sci-
entists and technicians) believe in the
possibility of extrasensory perception.
- At the University of California,
Psychologist Charles Tart reports that
his subjects showed a marked increase
in ESP scores after working with his new
teaching machine.
- In Los Angeles, a leaf is cut in
half, then photographed by a special
process. The picture miraculously shows
the "aura" or outline of the whole leaf.
- In Washington, the Defense De-
partment's Advanced Research Projects
Agency assigns a team to investigate
seemingly authentic psychic phenome-
na at the Stanford Research Institute.
- Orth
Fl9~l~? ~ r f
spoons and keys apparently with the
force of his thoughts.
- In the Philippines, Tennis Star
Tony Roche is relieved of painful "ten-
nis elbow" when an incision is made and
three blood clots are apparently re-
moved by the touch of a psychic healer,
who knows nothing of surgery or of mod-
ern sanitation.
- 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.
- I n California, ex-Astronaut Edgar
Mitchell, who while on the Apollo 14
moon mission conducted telepathy ex-
periments with friends on earth, founds
the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His new
mission: investigate occurrences that
will not yield to rational explanation.
- In London, Arthur Koestler ex-
amines psychic research with the zeal
of the believer. Koestler, one of the fore-
most explicators of Establishment sci-
ence (The Sleepwalkers, The Act of Cre-
ation), speaks of "synchronized" events
that lie outside the expectations of prob-
ability. In anecdotes of foresight and ex-
trasensory perception, in the repetition
of events and the strange behavior of
random samplings, Koestler spots what
he calls the roots of coincidence. In his
unforgettable metaphor, modern scien-
tists are "Peeping Toms at the keyhole
of eternity." That keyhole is stuffed with
ancient biases toward the materialistic
yt,~ jar
~tlaslr~C1~Pt1'HKy~~"~'r'rY onse-
~ ~ e e r g field
laymen and scientists alike by bending of psychic research. Once skeptics aban-
 Approved For ase.2QQ
CLOCKWISE. FROM LEFT: At Durham's Psychical Re- Medical Center in New York City: Artist anti i?sycnic uigu
search Foundation, Robert Morris displays test in which Swann with painting completed after his "out of body" ad-
subject outside of room "influences" movement of a cat: venture in outer space: gerbil in tests for precognitive pow-
sensory-isolation and telepathy experiment at Maimonides crs at The Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, N.C.
Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8
 don those prejudices, says Koestle"? 'ley some extent in the existence of some -Witted to finding phenomena. And few
will be free to slF"? 2003/ 1>BrtoQW -@8 767sR000 cOiOk 0004controls necessary in a
That exploration is already being
conducted by a number of serious para-
normalists in a wide range of disciplines.
In his Foundation for the Research on
the Nature of Man, in Durham, N.C.,
the grand old man of paranormal stud-
ies, J.B. Rhine (see box page 70), still
keeps watch on test animals for precog-
nitive powers. At the nearby Psychical
Research Foundation, William Roll and
a research staff investigates "survival af-
ter bodily death." In studies with a "sen-
sitive" and his pet cat, Roll finds ev-
idence for a human ability "to leave"
RUSSIAN FINGER-READING TEST
Basically show biz.
the body and "visit" the animal. At the
University of Virginia Medical School,
Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson also studies
the plausibilities of reincarnation.
At the Division of Parapsychology
and Psychophysics of the Maimonides
Medical Center, Dr. Montague Ullman
directs tests in which message senders
"think" images into the brains of sleep-
ing subjects. "If we had adequate fund-
ing," says Ullman, "we could have a
major breakthrough in this decade." In
Connecticut, Businessman Robert Nel-
son directs the Central Premonitions
Registry, meticulously recording the
prophecies of the dreams and visions
that people send him.
All of these researchers believe to
Psychologist Gardner Murphy, profes-
sor at the District of Columbia's George
Washington University, and a dean of
psychic researchers, "It may well turn
out that parapsychology will be a mul-
tidisciplinary thing, owing much to psy-
chiatry, neurology ... medicine, bio-
chemistry, social sciences." One of
parapsychology's most famous propo-
nents, in fact, is an anthropologist: Mar-
garet Mead. It was her passionate ad-
vocacy that helped give the Parapsycho-
logical Association its greatest claim to
legitimacy. After several vain attempts
to enter the eminent American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science,
the P.A. won membership in 1969-af-
ter a speech by Mead. Her argument:
"The whole history of scientific advance
is full of scientists investigating phenom-
ena that the Establishment did not be-
lieve were there. I submit that we vote
in favor of this association's work." The
final vote: 6 to 1 in favor of admission.
Immense Claims. As parapsychol-
ogy gains new respectability, so do its
terms gain wide currency: "psi" for any
psychic phenomenon; "clairvoyance"
for the awareness of events and objects
that lie outside the perimeters of the five
senses; "out-of-body" experience for
seeming to journey to a place that may
be miles from the body; "psychokinesis"
for the mental ability to influence phys-
ical objects; "precognition" for the
foreknowledge of events, from the fall
of dice to the prediction of political as-
sassinations; and the wide-ranging term
ESP for extrasensory perception.
For all its articulate spokesmen and
scientific terminology, however, the new
world of psi still has a serious credibil-
ity problem. One reason is that like any
growth industry or pop phenomenon, it
has attracted a fair share of hustlers. In
deed, the psychic-phenomena boom
may contain more charlatans and con-
be found on the stage and in the au-
dience of ten Ringling Brothers circus-
es. The situation is not helped at all by
the "proofs" that fail to satisfy tradition-
al canons of scientific investigations. De-
spite the published discoveries, despite
the indefatigable explorations of the
psychic researchers, no one has yet been
able to document. experiments suffi-
ciently to convince the infidel. For
many, doubt grows larger with each ex-
travagant claim.
To Science and Mathematics Ana-
lyst Martin Gardner (Relativity for the
Million, Ambidextrous Universe), an-
nouncements of psychic phenomena be-
long not to the march of science but to
the pageant of publicity. "Uri Geller,
The Secret Life of Plants, telepathy, ESP,
the incomplete conclusions of Koestler
-all seem part of a new uncritical en-
thusiasm for pseudo science," says Gard-
ner. "The claims are immense, the proof
nonexistent. The researchers, almost
without exception, are emotionally com-
unconscious, is all too familiar."
Daniel Cohen, former managing ed-
itor of Science Digest and author of the
debunking volume Myths of the Space
Age, remains unpersuaded by what he
sees through the Koestlerian keyhole.
"After decades of research and exper-
iments," Cohen observes, "the parapsy-
chologists are not one step closer to ac-
ceptable scientific proof of psychic
phenomena. Examining the slipshod
work of the modern researchers, one be-
gins to wonder if any proof exists."
The criticism that psychics find
hardest to counter comes not from sci-
enlists but from conjurers. Theoretically,
magicians have no place in serious sci-
ence. But they are entertainers whose
business it is to deceive; thus they feel
that they are better qualified to spot chi-
canery than scientists, who can be woe-
fully naive about the gimmicks and tech-
niques that charlatans may use for
mystical effects. James Randi, who ap-
pears on television as "the Amazing
Randi," duplicates many of Uri Geller's
achievements with a combination of
sleight of hand, misdirected attention
and patented paraphernalia, then calls
them feats of clay. "Scientists who fall
for the paranormal go through the most
devious reasoning," Randi says. "For-
tunes are squandered annually in pur-
suit of mystical forces that are actually
the result of clever deceits. The money
would be better spent investigating the
tooth fairy or Santa Claus. There is more
evidence for their reality."
Pure Deception. Charles Reyn-
olds, editor and member of the Psychic
Investigating Committee of the Amer-
ican Society of Magicians, agrees.
"When evaluating the research, we have
found that the researcher's will to be-
lieve is all powerful. It's a will that has
nothing to do with religion; there are
Marxists, atheists, agnostics who cling
stubbornly to the ancient faith in
black magic. Only now,it's called `the
paranormal.' "
That faith is nowhere more evident
than in the U.S.S.R., which has been
beset in recent years with controversial
sensitives. One, Ninel Kulagina, was ap-
praised as capable of causing objects to
float in mid-air. As Martin Gardner
notes, "She is a pretty, plump, dark-
eyed little charlatan who took the stage
name of Ninel because it is Lenin spelled
backward. She is no more a sensitive
than Kreskin, and like that amiable
American television humbug, she is
basically show biz." Indeed, Ninel
has been caught cheating more than
U.C.L.A. Psychologist Thelma Moss ex-
plores the mysteries of Kirlian photog-
raphy-pictures believed by some to
show the "aura" of living things. Insert:
Kirlian photos of normal elbow (left) and
same elbow while experiencing mild
electrical shock.
66 Approved For Release 2003/04/18: CIA-RDP96-00787ROGGI O008OOO GE. INSERT. DR. T
 CLOCKWISE FROM LIApproved, For.I$ >ee2003/04110 A i ~ s~~~ =(~Ui 00~ Q~Q QQ,Q s l 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-Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who of-hand, psychology and theatrical gimmicks checks set of
experienced "altered state of consciousness" in outer space, "ESP" cards: Trinidadian "'sensitive" performing card clair-
at his Institute for Noelic Sciences in Palo Alto, Cal.: voyance experiment at The Institute for Parapsychology.
 securely blindfolded. James Randi, an-
alyzing photographs of Kulcshova,
promptly announced that her act was
"a fraud." To prove his point, he invit-
ed testers to blindfold him with pizza
dough, a mask and a hood. Then he pro-
ceeded to drive a car in traffic. "I won't
tell you how I did it," he says. "But it
was not parapsychologically. It was pure
deception, just as hers was." Such rev-
elations have not deterred the parapsy-
chologists in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere.
They freely concede that many of their
subjects do sometimes cheat, but still
may have paranormal powers,
In and out of the laboratory, many
paranormalist investigators conduct ex-
periments that mock rigorous and log-
ical procedure. Claims are made, and
the burden of proof is shifted to the
doubter. Ground rules are laid down by
the psychic subject and are all too
eagerly accepted by his examiner. If the
venture proves unsuccessful, a wide
range of excuses are proffered: an un-
believer provided hostile vibrations; the
subject was not receiving well; negative
influences were present; testing rules
were too restrictive. It is all reminiscent
of the laws in Through the Looking-
Glass, where people approach objects by
walking away from them. And it cre-
ates an atmosphere in which even a gen-
uine paranormal subject might have a
hard time certifying his abilities.
No one has contributed more to the
paranormal explosion than Uri Geller,
the handsome, 26-year-old Israeli for-
mer nightclub magician who seems
equally adept at telepathy, psychokine-
sis and precognition. "I don't want to
spend my whole life in laboratories,"
Geller recently told TIME London Cor-
respondent Lawrence Malkin. "I've just
done a whole year at Stanford Research
Institute (TIME, March 121. Now I'll go
on to other countries, and let them see
if they know what it is I've got."
Death Threats. At the Stanford
Research Institute Geller successfully
worked most of his repertoire of mir-
acles. In a film made by S.R.I., Geller
picks the can containing an object from
a group of identical empty cans, influ-
ences laboratory scales, reproduces
drawings scaled in opaque envelopes,
deflects a magnetometer and correctly
calls the upper face of a die in a closed
box-eight times in eight tries. If tel-
ler's prowess with dice is indeed para-
normal, it raises serious and disturbing
sor Ray Hyman calls "incredible slop- work. But the S.R.I. scientists are not
piness," then other disturbing questions taken aback. One, Russell Targ, plac-
may be raised. Assigned by the Depart- idly remarks, "The things you are tell-
merit of Defense to report on the won- ing us agree very well with things that
drous happenings at S.R,I., Hyman, ac- flat IS.R.I. Colleague Harold Puthoff)
companied by George Lawrence, DOD and I believe but we can't prove." Adds
projects manager for the Advanced Re- Astronaut Ed Mitchell: "Uri, you're not
search Projects Agency, caught Geller saying anything to us we don't in some
in some outright deceptions. way already sense or understand." The
Unhappily for Geller, his powers text raises some troubling questions. Is
have a tendency to vanish in the pres- Puharich indeed in touch with what he
ence of sleigh t-of- han d men. On the To- calls "my editor in the sky"? Is his ac-
night Slrow, where Johnny Carson in- count of the S.R.I. meeting as true as
stituted airtight controls at Randi's his reasonably accurate report of Uri's
suggestion, nothing that Geller attempt- meeting a year ago with the editors of
ed (during an embarrassing 20 minutes) TIME? If it is, why have the S.R.I. sci-
seemed to work. After a group of Eng- entists failed to mention Uri Geller's
lish magicians made plans to catch him contacts with outer space? Are they
ri~
PSYCHOLOGIST TART WORKING ESP MACHINE
Searching for a wider kind of self.
in the act during a British tour, Geller
abruptly canceled out, citing mysterious
"death threats."
In the long run, however, Geller's
friends may well be more damaging to
his cause than are his detractors. This
spring the reputable old firm of Dour
bleday will publish a book entitled Uri
by Dr. Andrija Puharich, who brought
Geller to the U.S. from Israel. In a crude
mishmash of Mission: Impossible, 2001
and the James Bond series
Puharich
,
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: (author of a previous volume on the psy-
Psychic Uri Geller, whose reputed abil- chedelic effects of mushrooms) soberly
ity to bend objects with his mind has describes his adventures with Geller.
stirred sharp debate; ESP test at the From outer space, highly intelligent
American Society for Psychical Re- computers called SPECTRA communi-
search; Lie Detector Expert Cleve Back- sate through taped messages, which dis-
ster with plant that he believes can appear. "We can only talk to you
"read" his thoughts; in psychokinesis through Uri's power," says the mystical
test, subject tries to influence sequence voice. "It is a shame that for such a bril-
in which bulbs will light. liant mind we cannot contact you di-
BEHAVIOR
once by ' Soviet Est" s~
~ H~ h` tiP0o&i0~1~8~~h~1}86~II078teF.~0,Q~~101~0a01fi(ii?ia$ly meets the in-
Another Russian . y, osa ales r S.R.1.'s tests were indeed conducted vestigators from S.R.I., he confesses that
ova, can "read" with her fingertips while with what University of Oregon Profes- outer-space intelligence directs his
properly fearful of that most
irrefutable antidote to non-
sense: laughter? Or were
they, as they now claim,
merely "humoring" their
subject?
Almost as impressive as
Geller's rise to fame is the
phenornenal success of The
Secret Life of Plants (Har-
per & Row; $8.95), a vol-
ume that is unaccountably
placed on the nonfiction
shelves of bookstores. The
work of two occult journal-
ists, Secret Life is an anthol-
ogy of the absurd, costumed
in the prim gown of labo-
ratory respectability. In it
are researchers like Cleve
Backstcr, a lie-detector ex-
pert who attached the ter-
minals of his machines to
plants. Behold! The vegeta-
tion reacted to his thoughts.
Most scientists have greeted
the experiments with open
skepticism-with good rea-
son. After his plants would
not respond for a visiting
Canadian plant physiolo-
gist, for example, Backster
offered an interesting hy-
pothesis: the plants "fainted" because
they sensed that she routinely inciner-
ated her own plants and then weighed
the ashes after her experiments.
Backstcr is the essence of conserva-
tism compared with the book's more ad-
venturous researchers. A New Jersey
electronics buff, Pierre Paul Sauvin, at-
tached a Rube Goldbergian machine to
his plants, and then spent the weekend
with his girl friend at a place 80 miles
away. He found that even at that dis-
tance the plants had responded to his
sexual relations with the girl. The tone
oscillators went "right off the top," he
says, at the moment of orgasm.
In Japan, Ken Hashimoto, another
polygraph expert, discovered that his
cactus could count and add up to 20.
George De La Warr, a British engineer,
insisted that young plants grew better if
their "mother" were kept alive. Ironi-
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 catty, the a 2003/04/4-9-t CI4' P-96s007'8 0 18 is." Stanford Professor
selves to sot c, significant facts about Moss, who has taken more Kirlian pho- illiam Tiller, an enthusiast of the
botany. Plants do respond physiological- tographs and done more experimental paranormal, 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-
cause it thrives on the carbon dioxide ex-
haled by the speaker.
Many psychics and (heir followers
believe that paranormal powers may be
dependent on mysterious auras or "en-
ergy flows," phenomena that they say
can be recorded by Kirlian photogra-
phy. The technique, developed in the
late 1930s by Russian Electronics Ex-
pert Semyon Kirlian and his wife Va-
lentina, involves introducing a small
amount of high-voltage, high-frequency
current into the subject and recording
the subsequent discharge on photo-
graphic film. The result is a photograph
showing all "energy body"--a weird
aura-around the plant, animal or hu-
man part being photographed.
Soon, Kirlians claimed that photo-
graphing a portion of a leaf, for exam-
ple, would produce the aura of the en-
tire leaf on film. Some psychics claim
that in time the aura of a missing limb
might be discernible with Kirlian pho-
tography. Today the process is an in-
tegral part of paranormal exploration.
In the U.S. the leading proponent of the
Russia.
Moss, a former Broadway actress,
on film. -"What we're looking at," he
maintains, "is cold electron discharge."
Sickly Tissue. Says L. Jerome Stan-
ton, author of a forthcoming book on
auras and Kirlian photography: "Per-
haps some day the technique will be a
valuable diagnostic tool. Maybe sick
people do have different 'auras.' But as
of now, there is no assurance that it is at
all useful." Though not accusing Kirlian
researchers of faking effects, Stanton
notes that the famous "phantom leaf' is
easy to duplicate by double-exposing the
film, first with the whole leaf, again af-
a portion has been removed, and that
ter
different voltages and conditions can
change the picture in incalculable ways.
"Working with advanced equipment,"
he says, "1 could produce Kirlian effects
that would astound the unsophisticated,
and that includes a lot of scientists and
physicists. Remember, electronics and
photography are two very complicated
found her interest in parapsychological
phenomena kindled after 151) therapy.
"From the first," she recalls, "I intend-
ed to specialize in parapsychology be-
cause of the glimpses of psychic phe-
nomena I experienced during the LSD
treatments. But I certainly don't feel the
need to use drugs any more ... When
you've gotten the message, you hang up
the phone." For Moss, the message is
that Kirlian photography clearly dem-
onstrates a human aura. "We have done
work with acupuncturists and [psychic]
healers," she says, "and we find that the
corona of the healer becomes intense be-
fore healing, and then afterward is more
relaxed and less strong. We think were
looking at a transfer of energy from the
healer to the injured person."
Others are less certain. Writing in
the Photographic Society of America
journal, Bill Zalud concluded, "All spec-
ulation hinges on obtaining photographs
of normal tissue patterns for compar-
ative purposes and, so far, no one has
really determined what a normal Kir-
A Lon History of Hoaxes
The first professional organization to
study paranormal phenomena was the
British Society for Psychical Research,
founded in 1882. Among 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, daughters of the Rev. A.M. Crecry.
The mentalist millennium 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 "sensitives" from
Brighton, G.A. Smith and Douglas
Blackburn. Smith would allow himself
to be blindfolded, his ears 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. in 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: "[Our 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 in 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 demonstration 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
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 Henry
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, harry houdini reported that
the conjurer was simply a fraud with
a dazzling technique; Slade later con-
fessed that it was indeed all an act.
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TIME, MARCH 4, 1974
 The most irresponsible and odious
niche in the world of the paranormal is
occupied by the psychic healers, who
cannot operate legally in the U.S. but
lure unfortunate Americans overseas
with claims of spectacular cures. Diag-
nosing illnesses and locating diseased or-
gans by purely psychic means, they per-
form operations by plunging their hands
through what appear to be deep inci-
sions to grasp and remove sickly tissue.
In the Philippines, currently the center
for psychic surgery, a number of con-
jurers use sleight of hand and buckets
of blood and animal parts to work their
wonders. Surrounded by adherents who
have been "cured," the ill-educated and
often filthy surgeons perform "opera-
tions"-slashes of the epidermis, knives
in the eye cavity, fingers in the abdomen
-sometimes painlessly and always with
great flourish.
As one witness to such "surgery" de-
scribes it: "The healer pulled some tis-
sue from the area of the `operation' ...
froth Tony's hand ... I wanted to have
valid medical tests performed on it. The
tests, conducted in Seattle, showed that
the tissue was `consistent with origin
from a small animal ... there is no ev-
idence in any of this tissue to suggest
that this represents metastatic carcino-
ma from the breast of the patient.' "
Tom Valentine, author of a book on per-
haps the best known of the psychic sur-
geons, Tony Agpaoa., documents the ex-
perience of a Mrs. Raymond Steinberg
of Two Rivers, Wis. Tony "made a ma-
jor production" of removing a piece of
metal and several screws that had been
surgically placed in her hip after an au-
tomobile accident. X rays later showed
that Agpaoa had removed nothing.
True Believer. But the psychics,
and those who profit from them, remain
undaunted. In a few months, the respect-
able publishing firm of Thomas Y.
Crowell will publish the story of yet an-
other psychic healer, the late great Bra-
zilian Arigo, Surgeon of the Rusty Knife.
The author: John Fuller, whose pro-fly-
ing-saucer books Incident at Exeter and
The Interrupted Journey were big sellers
during the UFO craze of the 1960s. The
afterward is written by Geller Biogra-
pher Puharich, who in Uri incidentally
tens 01 ex terrestrial Intelligence as-
suring him that Arigo was not hurt in his
fatal car accident in 1971: "There was no
pain. He left his body before the crash."
No amount of demonstrable fraudu-
lence, no exposure of the fake, the ma-
nipulator, the unscrupulous, ever seems
capable of dissuading the true believer
in paranormality. James Fadiman, of
the Stanford School of Engineering, be-
lieves that "most (but not all) para-
psychologist demonstrators are also
frauds," then gives the classic rationale:
"Look at it this way. You think you have
powers of clairvoyance, and finally you
become a celebrity because of it. You're
on the stage or in an experimental sit-
uation and sometimes your powers fail
you. They do very often for most of these
guys. So what do they do? They cheat."
Robert Benchley once separated
people into two categories: those who
separate people into two categories and
those who do not. Parapsychologist Ger-
trude Schmeidler of New York's City
College is in the first category. Her stud-
ies show that on the issue of para-
psychology her subjects divide into be-
lieving sheep and doubting goats. The
sheep almost invariably score higher
in tests of paranormal powers. Will
the sheep ever convince the ruminating
searchers have also used questionable
the number of correct guesses fall be-
Perhaps parapsychology's most 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
naivete 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 bottoms of gardens. In his 1922
volume The Conning of tlrc F'air'ies, Doyle
reproduced photographs of a tiny gob-
lin and elves caught by a child's cam-
era, The pictures were manifestly staged;
the entire project made all but the blind-
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-
erature 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
low average and "displacement" when
subjects call the card before or after the
one they are trying to guess.) H.L. Menc-
ken summarized 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 myste-
rious powers." Rhine tightened his lab-
oratory conditions in the i930s, and
much of the criticism withered-but so
did his ESP stars.
In the 1960s a psychic superstar
came along in the person of Ted Serios,
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 Serios at work in Denver, had
little trouble constructing a device that
could be secreted inside a gismo to pro-
duce all of Serios' 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.
Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8
 BEHAVIOR
goats? Will the goats ever underr
the faith of o~1?2~dmva4cFvst* _ secf ' w/os ~j fd t niversrtY of Virg r
TR Q00 n-
J 0414 ,f
00 Jcc- hou the rndulgs prove depress-
events have occurred. five researchers. To date, those demon- in y negative, it is unlikely that acad-
Just a few years ago what smug strations have not been made. emies 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 goats.
learned of James Reston's appendix op- chologists parodies the notion of the sci- At the very least, the paranormal es-
eration. The Now York Times columnist entific method. Harold Puthoff, one of lablishment has questioned the dogma,
submitted to acupuncture after surgery the two S.R.I. investigators of Uri Gel- emphasized the ignorance and under-
on a trip to China in 1971; thereafter, lei, 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 acupuncture been experimenting with the response? have scarcely breached the frontiers of
is under 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 the ben- other. He is also a promoter of the bi- destroyed the layman's sense of wonder
eficial effects of "paranormal" medicine z.arre and controversial cult of Scicntoi- by seeking materialistic explanations for
have been acknowledged by Western ogy, which Ingo Swann, another psychic all phenomena.
scientists, they are still at NATIONAL T T11CR As C.P. Snow says: "Scientists re-
L, t., .,L, r,. =ro - -
'-p-- Y,vu,. I %:.,tapN
by the brain, why should Sometimes painlessly, always with flourish. there are 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 Putnam executive, recently con- laws of probability are often suspended.
posits black holes in the universe and 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 bizarre things as ncu- 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 us is in plants think.
timatter and quasars, why should any the area of sciences like lisp." 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 Sir James to fund S.1 11'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 whom proba-
look more and more like a great thought Targ's son. bility is not a mystique but a cornpre-
than a great machine"? The questionable connections of hensible code. By those who have noth-
The psychic adherent's reply is sim- many psychic researchers, in addition ing to lose but their skepticism. Until
pie: 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 sults 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- paranormal 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 phenomena cannot be accepted on a few foundations and gifts and encour- turn to mediums or wizards; do not seek
agement from occasional philanthro- them out, to be defiled by them ..." And
*A process by which one can learn to control in- pists like Stewart Mott and Manhattan that most wondrous and mysterious of
voluntary bodily functions (such as heartbeat)
through the visual or aural monitoring of physi- Realtor John Tishman. There is only entities, the human mind, will remain
ologicat data. one academic chair on parapsychology an Underdeveloped country.
72 Approved For Release 2003/04/18 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000100030002-8 TIME, MARCH 4, 1974
- .., ............. .. ,. v--- u.al may WA-
led from one brain to all-
1S It not possible that ~ru "t"` ~u~w uv,u oc?uua
s' tinY Some first-rate minds have
-ez
gnoran
t research
aches can be literally y
1 ~~ f is used to lend legitimacy to the most
ILI- w
child's siren th but the adult's weakness.
of the parts of their bod- g
That observation is even more valid to
ies at will; migraine head- +,t da when shodd or ii
p ans., make many of those hypotheses, they
in,^nntrm,Prtihl~ s~~,;, ' ~~. _. Y
.ILI
ties in To ek1 As for the parapsychologists who
what are normally invol- `''- - ~ $a _ '{ ?'? '"?? ^'? `"" .. ,,.,,..,.,,.,r w ...v u...
r _ "fEmensity of the unexplored and a toter
with biofeedback* has '' fl ,.,u~.,,, UIUL ~u,&,U,:,,tu,cutIssup-
skeptics that the~? 4, pressed." As Martin Gardner believes,
shown
"Modern science should indeed arouse
clc y we
fakery. Yet the new ve rn oesn t give you per-
.... _ 5... .~.' ~ ,,,,