BOOM TIMES ON THE PSYCHIC FRONTIER

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CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001-3
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March 23, 2000
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March 4, 1974
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a1J App roygtf grt1gijvgg@oZPAQMMc7a;pKIAd pbf91j-40 points among writers, editors, correspondents and reporter-research- ers-one that ultimately serves to balance and enhance the finished story. Such was the case in dealing with the complex and contro- versial subject of psychic phenomena. Los Angeles Correspondent Richard Duncan was particularly open in his approach. One day at U.C.L.A., Duncan submitted himself to Kirlian photography, a pro- cess for measuring psychic energy, Although there were too few ex- posures to prove or disprove anything to his satisfaction. Duncan was interested to see that the developed film of his fingertips showed blotchy, whorled or spiky "coronas" that corresponded to his dif- fering emotional states. Senior Editor Leon Jaroff, on the other hand, brought rigorous sci- entific standards to his judgments on the story, and an admitted pre- disposition to skepticism. "Belief in these matters," he feels, "is less a function of intelligence than of psychological need." Although he firm- ly believes that even such widespread phenomena as dejk vu and precognitive dreams will eventually yield to rational analysis, he can- not rationally explain why, three times in a row last week, his clock-radio failed to go off, making him late for work. Even more bizarre was the mysterious force that glitched TIME'S complex, computerized copy-process- ing system on closing night -at almost the precise mo- ment that our psychic- phenomena story was fed into it. Against astronomi- cal odds, both of the ma- chines that print out TIME'S copy stopped working simultaneously. No sooner were the spirits ex- orcised and the machines back in operation than the IBM computer in effect swallowed the entire cover story; it developed a flaw in its pro- gramming that sent the copy circling endlessly through memory loops from which it could not be retrieved, Thirteen hours and a second ex- pert exorcism later, the IBM 370/135 snapped out of its trance and grudgingly returned the finished story to us. Associate Editor Stefan Kanfer. who wrote the cover story, man- aged to remain free of psychic interruption last week. "I got into this topic," he says, "through the back door-some would say front door -of magic and mentalism. There are many tricks with which one can duplicate paranormal phenomena." Indeed, Amateur Magician Kanfer astounded numerous TIME staffers last week by seeming to guess correctly, over the telephone, cards that had been pulled from a deck in Jaroffs office-which is one floor below Kanfer's. /) n Cover Story 65 Color -67 Economy & Business 75 Art 56 Energy 22 Law 86 Behavior 65 Letters 4 Books 82 Medicine 60 Cinema 62 Milestones 59 Music 55 Nation 10 People 40 Press 42 Religion 50 Science 74 World 25 The Cover: Graft color illustration by Howard Sochurek, TIME 872?00700030001-3 Founders: BRITON HubotN 1898.1929 HrNar R. Luce 1898.1967 Editor-in-Chief: Healey Donovan Chairman of the Board: Andrew Heiskell President: James R. Shepley Chairman Executive Committee: James A. Linen Group Vice President, Magazines: Arthur W. Keyloi Vice Chairman: Roy E. Larsen MANAGING EDITOR Henry Anatole Grunwald ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS Murray J. Gart, Edward L. Jamieson, Richard M. Seaman SENIOR EDITORS: Laurence I. Barrett, Ruth Brine. John T. 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Frances Bonder, Madeline Butler, Ant Davis, Susan Hahn, Katherine Mihok, Emily Mitchell, Shirley Zimmerman. EDITORIAL SERVICES: Paul Welch (Director), Norman Airey, George Kora Benjamin Lightman, Doris O'Neil, Carolyn R. Pappas. ^ PUBLISHER Ralph P. Davidson General Manager: Donald J. Barr Assistant Publisher: Lane Fortinberry Circulation Director: George S. Wiedemann Ill Business Mona er. Donald L S urdle TIME is published weekly, $14,00 er year, by Time Inc., 541 N. Fairbanks Court, Chico o, II. ADVERTISING g SALES DIRECTOR P 9 I 60611. ford J. Principal office: Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. 10020. James R. Shepleyy Presidem; Clif ert C. Barr ford . Grum, Treasurer; Charles B. Bear, Secretory Second class postage paid at C hicogo, III., and Rob at additional mailing offices. Vol. 103 No. 9 O 1974 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in U.S. Advertising Sales Director: Gorey T. Symington Approvedw or r eieasep2bbb/08/07: CIA-RDP96-00771 `tl~b-6 ?td d~6flbt? e3: Kenneth E. Clarke Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can 1. or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them ? -Henry IV 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- 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. - In 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. 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. periments with friends on earth, founds vivid dream that becomes the morning - In England, a poll of its readers the Institute of Noetic 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 - 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. - At the University of California, of the believer. Koestler, one of the 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- in EsI 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 - 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 of Greek epic and biblical process. The picture miraculously shows of events and the strange behavior of saga, of medieval tale and Eastern the "aura" or outline of the whole leaf random samplings, Koestler spots what chronicle. Modern science and psychol- - In Washington, the Defense De- he calls the roots of coincidence. In his ogy have learned to explain much of partment's Advanced Research Projects unforgettable metaphor, modern scien- what was once inexplicable, but mys- Agency assigns a team to investigate tists are "Peeping Toms at the keyhole teries remain. The workings of the mind seemingly authentic psychic phenome- of eternity." 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 - On both sides of the Atlantic, Uri and rational explication and, conse- accident, illusion? Or are there other Geller, a young Israeli psychic, astounds quently, away from the emerging field planes and AIg cP 1ie 4ea- ?O1O&a?ts OMMP96-~ G"7bft50bt+lban- TIME, MARCH 4, 1974 65 ADDroved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0700030001-3 BEHAVIOR don those prejudices, says Koestler, they will be free to explore fresh concepts and new categories. 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 prop that milted to finding phenomena. And few are aware of the controls necessary in a field in which deception, conscious or 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- entists 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. Its 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: ~txrq~ )ogr& I6a 2 t i ~C t~sc' s"arc'1(d 87R f~~~ ~ xal~lbow (left) and Th e e rs, l s same el Jow w I e e periencing mild All of these researchers believe to without exception, are emotionally com- electrical shock. some extent in the existence of some form of paranormal psychic powers. But the forms are open to wide debate. Says 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 I 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- jurers, more naffs and gullibles than can 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 thusiasm for pseudo science," says Gard- Approved For Release 2000/0 CLOCKWISE. FROM LEFT: At Durham's Psychical Re- Medical Center in New York City: Artist and Psychic Ingo 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 cai: venture in outer space: gerbil in tests for precognitive pow- sensory-isolation and telepathy experiment at Maimonides ers at The Institute for Parapsychology in Durham. N.C. Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001-3 CLOCKWISApp em friReIeaSw,2QQQtQa!O7?Th9A`nlaRgPR?ATO9T?7, a9 WI?99,14,9,99d' O d 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 Noetic Sciences in Palo Alto. Cal.: voyance experiment at The Institute for Parapsychology. elease 2000/08/07 BEHAVIOR once by v' y~ n~gp ?~ S~gu efQl b9l ~'~ ~t00 7R8~I8~Q031 tc$he in- Anot~ 'a i i?y, R' a KI)T - 7f $.R'1. s ests were in eed conducted vestigators from S.R.L, he confesses that ova, can "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, piness," 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 arc 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 hirn with pizza drous happenings at S.R.I., Hyman, ac- Hal IS.R.I. Colleague Harold Puthofl7 dough, a mask and a hood. Then he 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," he says. "But it search Projects Agency, caught Geller saying anything to us we don't in some was not parapsychologically. It was pure 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 elations have not deterred the parapsy- have a tendency to vanish in the pres- Puharich indeed in touch with what he chologists in the U.S.S.R. or elsewhere. ence of sleight-of-hand men. On the To- calls "my editor in the sky"? Is his ac- They freely concede that many of their night Show, 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 the 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 BILL EPPRIDGE 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 the merely "humoring" their venture proves unsuccessful, a wide subject? range of excuses are proffered: an un- Almost as impressive as believer provided hostile vibrations: the Geller's rise to fame is the subject was not receiving well; negative phenomenal 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 l r placed on the nonfiction walking away from them. And it cre- shelves of bookstores. The ates an atmosphere in which even a gen- ?R work of two occult journal- uine paranormal subject might have a ists, Secret Life is an anthol- hard time certifying his abilities. ogy of the absurd, costumed No one has contributed more to the in the prim gown of labo- paranormal explosion than Uri Geller, ~?~ ~y~,~;r.w ~?, ratory respectability. In it the handsome, 26-year-old Israeli for- are researchers like Cleve mer nightclub magician who seems Backster, a lie-detector ex- equally adept at telepathy, psychokine- ~r. pert who attached the ter- sis and precognition. "I don't want to ?. ~.,. l minals of his machines to spend my whole life in laboratories," . plants. Behold! The vegeta- Geller recently told TIME London Cor- respondent Lawrence Malkin. "I've justt tion reacted to his thoughts. J Most scientists have greeted done a whole year at Stanford Research r r-" 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 D h Th eat reats. 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 inciner- a group of identical empty cans, influ- "death 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 sealed in opaque envelopes, friends may well be more damaging to Backster is the essence of conserva- deflects a magnetometer 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 Dou- 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 Puharich, 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 Mission: Impossible, 2001 with his girl friend at a place 80 miles and the James Bond series, Puharich away. He found that even at that dis- CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: (author of a previous volume on 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 ity 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 Approved For Relea a 2000%08%07 of CIA chDuP d6 M0656 ~uo6Nd_0qI- ?ni- COLOR SPREAD (TOP) DON SNYDER-HORIZON, HENRY GROSKINSKY, ELDA HARTLEY, BILL EPPRIDAE; (BOTTOM) HENRY GROSKINSKY. OPPOSITE PAGE: (TOP LEFT) BEN MARTIN, GROSKINSKY 69 ca y, the au~t~h~orrs d no dQress tth,,er3~ }~ 1 s ar urd Professor s p~~cl sirwe, f 6o6t00 s"l hasY~l n'rltbf }s'iYliai 7' i17i i~5 "1'illr 1 dagbilfusiast 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- Russia. on film. "What we're looking at." he 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. Jerome Stan- Many psychics and their followers phenomena kindled after LSD therapy. ton, author of a forthcoming book on believe that paranormal powers may be "From the first," she recalls, "I intend- auras and Kirlian photography: "Per- dependent on mysterious auras or "en- ed to specialize in parapsychology be- haps some day the technique will be a ergy flows," phenomena that they say cause of the glimpses of psychic phe- valuable diagnostic tool. Maybe sick can be recorded, by Kirlian photogra- nomena I experienced during the LSD 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 leaf' 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 onstrates 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 an "energy body"-a weird corona of the healer becomes intense be- change the picture in incalculable ways. aura-around the plant. animal or hu- fore healing, and then afterward is more "Working with advanced equipment." man part being photographed. relaxed and less strong. We think we're he says, "I could produce Kirlian effects Soon, Kirlians claimed that photo- looking at a transfer of energy from the that 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 on film. Some psychics claim the Photographic Society of America photography are two very complicated that in time the aura of a missing limb journal. Bill Zalud concluded, "All spec- might be discernible with Kirlian pho- ulation hinges on obtaining photographs tography. Today the process is an in- of normal tissue patterns for compar- tegral part of paranormal exploration. ative purposes and, so far, no one has In the U.S. the leading proponent of the really determined what a normal Kir- A Long 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 the telepathic abilities of five little girls, daughters of the Rev. A.M. Creery. 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] 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. He 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. 7oApproved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001~I;E, MApcH4, 1974 fields. a ARA l ~hR6Sorb`rr"lt 0 will Tema d"ti on11 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' ... 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 Coming of the Fairies, 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- Tt? n o hav oaurg im that ~v was t in his 1 tests performed on it. The fatal car accident in 1971: "There was no ted in Seattle, showed that pain. He left his body before the crash." as 'consistent with origin No amount of demonstrable fraudu- animal ... there is no ev- lence, no exposure of the fake, the ma- y of this tissue to suggest nipulator, the unscrupulous, ever seems resents metastatic carcino- capable of dissuading the true believer e breast of the patient.' " in paranormality. James Fadiman, of ne, author of a book on per- the Stanford School of Engineering, be- known of the psychic sur- lieves that "most (but not all) para- Agpaoa, documents the ex- psychologist demonstrators are also Mrs. Raymond Steinberg frauds," then gives the classic rationale: s, Wis. Tony "made a ma- "Look at it this way. You think you have n" of removing a piece of powers of clairvoyance, and finally you veral screws that had been become a celebrity because of it. You're ced in her hip after an au- on the stage or in an experimental sit- ident. X rays later showed uation and sometimes your powers fail had removed nothing. you. They do very often for most of these liever. But the psychics, guys. So what do they do? They cheat."" o profit from them, remain Robert Benchley once separated n a few months, the respect- people into two categories: those who ing firm of Thomas Y. separate people into two categories and publish the story of yet an- those who do not. Parapsychologist Ger- healer, the late great Bra- trude Schmeidler of New York's City Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. College is in the first category. Her stud- ohn Fuller, whose pro-fly- ies show that on the issue of para- oks Incident at Exeter and psychology her subjects divide into be- ed Journey were big sellers lieving sheep and doubting goats. The Fo craze of the 1960s. The sheep almost invariably score higher written by Geller Biogra- in tests of paranormal powers. Will h, who in Uri incidentally the sheep ever convince the ruminating 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 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 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 1930s, 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: he 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-Eisendrath story was printed in Popular Photography and many of Serios' followers were shattered. Again the millennium was deferred. TIME,MARCH~,pproved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000700030001-3 71 valid medics tests, conduc w the tissue from a small idence in a n that this rep ma from th Tom Valenti haps the best geons, Tony perience of a of Two River jor productio metal and se surgically pl a tomobile ace that Agpaoa True Be and those wh undaunted. I able publish Crowell will other psychic zilian Arigo, The author: J ing-saucer bo The Interrupt during the u afterword is pher Puharic BEHAVIOR goats? Will the goats ever undermine faith; they must 4l r[C1Cd,C LUUYverVis arcfiers Just a few years ago what smug Western rationalist would have accred- ited acupuncture? Yet the ethnocentric prejudice seemed to disappear almost at a stroke when the Western world learned of James Reston's appendix op- eration. The New York Times columnist submitted to acupuncture after surgery on a trip to China in 1971: thereafter, the unorthodox method was examined throughout the U.S. Today acupuncture is under intense study at several med- ical centers. Although some of the ben- eficial effects of "paranormal" medicine have been acknowledged by Western scientists, they are still at a loss to explain it. It was not long ago that most Americans attributed the feats of Eastern yogis to clever fakery. Yet the new Western experimentation with biofeedback* has shown skeptics that the mind can indeed control what are normally invol- untary bodily functions. The Menninger Founda- tion in Topeka, Kans., reports incontrovertible proof that subjects trained by biofeedback can con- trol their blood circulation and lower the temperature of the parts of their bod- ies at will; migraine head- aches can be literally wished away. The ancient yogic mythic skills sud- denly seem within the grasp of everyone. Is it not possible that thoughts-like TV pro- grams-can be transmit- ted from one brain to an- other? And if enough energy can be generated by the brain, why should it not influence the roll of be convincingly dem- in the U.S., at the University of Virgin- strations have not been made. emies or foundations would encourage Any close examiner of psychic in- more chairs, or promote further psychic vestigators and reporters will find a new investigations. meaning for Koestler's roots of coinci- In a way, it is rather a pity that the dence. A loose confederacy of parapsy- sheep cannot get together with the goats. chologists parodies the notion of the sci- At the very least, the paranormal es- entific method. Harold Puthoff, one of tablishment has questioned the dogma, the two S.R.I. investigators of Uri Gel- emphasized the ignorance and under- ler, is singled out in The Secret Life of lined the arrogance of modern medicine Plants as a reputable scientist who has and science. Indeed, modern doctors been experimenting with the response have scarcely breached the frontiers of of one chicken egg to the breaking of an- the mind. Science has all too frequently other. He is also a promoter of the bi- destroyed the layman's sense of wonder zarre and controversial cult of Scientol- by seeking materialistic explanations for ogy, which Ingo Swann, another psychic all phenomena. PSYCHIC SURGEON OPERATING IN PHILIPPINES Sometimes painlessly, always with flourish. dice? Or make a plant respond? In an epoch when the new physics posits black holes in the universe and particles that travel faster than the speed of light, and has already confirmed the existence of such bizarre things as neu- trinos that have no mass or charge, an- timatter and quasars, why should any phenomenon be assumed impossible? What is wrong with Physicist Sir James Jeans' attempt to give coherence to an unruly cosmos: "The universe begins to look more and more like a great thought than a great machine"? The psychic adherent's reply is sim- ple: anything is possible. But simply say- ing that it is so and then supporting the contention with shoddy or downright fraudulent evidence, is not enough. Psy- chic phenomena cannot be accepted on ?A process by which one can learn to control in- voluntary bodily functions (such as heartbeat) through the visual or aural monitoring of physi- ological data. tested by S.R.I., also practices. William Targ, a Putnam executive, recently con- tracted to publish Astronaut Ed Mitch- ell's forthcoming book, Psychic Explo- ration, A Challenge for Science. At the signing, Targ stated that "the real race now between the Russians and us is in the area of sciences like Esp." Mitch- ell's Institute of Noetic Sciences helped to fund S.R.I.'s Geller research, which was conducted largely by Puthoff and Russell Targ, who happens to be Editor Targ's son. The questionable connections of many psychic researchers, in addition to the paucity of objectively verifiable re- sults in their work, has made it difficult to raise funds for research; parapsychol- ogists barely squeak by with money from a few foundations and gifts and encour- agement from occasional philanthro- pists like Stewart Mott and Manhattan Realtor John Tishman. There is only one academic chair on parapsychology As C.P. Snow says: "Scientists re- gard it as a major intellectual virtue to know what not to think about." Com- plains one S.R.I. spokesman: "The so- ciety we live in doesn't give you per- mission to have psychic abilities. That is one reason that so much talent is sup- pressed." As Martin Gardner believes. "Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the im- mensity of the unexplored and a toler- ance for crazy hypotheses." As for the parapsychologists who make many of those hypotheses. they could learn the most valuable weapon in the arsenal of the truth seeker: doubt. One hundred and fifty years ago Charles Lamb observed that credulity was the child's strength but the adult's weakness. That observation is even more valid to- day, when shoddy or ignorant research is used to lend legitimacy to the most extravagant tenets of the psychic movement. That is not to say that parapsychol- ogy ought to be excluded from serious scrutiny. Some first-rate minds have been attracted to it: Freud, Einstein, Jung, Edison. The paranormal may ex- ist, against logic, against reason, against present evidence and beyond the stan- dard criteria of empirical proof. Perhaps there are reasons why the roll of the dice and turn of the cards sometimes appear to obey the bettor's will. Perhaps the laws of probability are often suspended. Perhaps Geller and other magicians can indeed force metal to bend merely be- cause they will it. Perhaps photographs can be projected by the mind. Perhaps plants think. Perhaps not. There is only one way to tell: by a thorough examination of the phenom- ena by those who do not express an a priori belief. By those for whom proba- bility is not a mystique but a compre- hensible code. By those who have noth- ing to lose but their skepticism. Until such examiners are allowed to play the psychic game, it is unlikely that the paranormal will escape the ambiguous utterance against it in Leviticus: "Do not turn to mediums or wizards: do not seek them out, to be defiled by them..." And that most wondrous and mysterious of entities, the human mind, will remain an underdeveloped country. 734pproved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R0007000300011JBE, MARCH 4, 1974