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Possible Geomagnetic Field Effects in Anomalous Dreams
* Stanley Krippner
Parapsychology is the scientific study of anomalous interactions. These interactions may be between organisms and their environment or between organisms and other organisms. They are anomalous because they seem to disregard mainstream science's notions of time, space, and energy. Parapsychology is sometimes called "psychical research”, or "psi research”. The word "psi" refers to the anomalous interactions studied by parapsychologists. Examples of these interactions are reports of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, life after death, and past - life experiences. Each of these reports can be studied in several ways. Parapsychologists use questionnaires, interviews, and field observations. In each of these cases, there is a possibility that conventional scientific explanations can account for the report. Some of these explanations are subtle sensory or motor activity, misinterpretation, poor memory for an event, and deliberate fraud. If an investigation systematically eliminates conventional scientific explanations, that research is performed under "psi task conditions”. Phenomena obtained under psi task conditions can be regarded as "anomalous" because they appear to transcend the constraints of time, space, or energy. Over the past century, considerable research has been conducted in an attempt to understand psi phenomena and to determine whether they are worthy of continued attention and investigation. The understanding of the conditions under which psi phenomena occur would accelerate acceptance of these phenomena as legitimate areas of investigation by mainstream science.
Complex Systems and Field Effects
Dreams are series of images that occur during sleep; if recalled, they are reported by the dreamer in narrative form. The night's first period of dreaming generally begins 90 minutes after a person falls asleep. The neurons at the base of the skull start to fire a random barrage of high voltage impulses, unleashing a cascade of potent chemicals that pour into the forebrain. The visual and motor centers are stimulated, triggering memories that are presented and combined in original, vivid, and often baffling ways. Immediately, the brain's mind creates a story that will make sense of these fragments, either providing a pre-existing script which serves as a template for the images, or producing a narrative on the spot that matches -- as best it can -- the stored memories that have been evoked.
Sometimes these stories reflect basic problems in living with which the dreamer has wrestled for years. At other times they reflect the events of the past few days or hours, some of them trivial, some of them consequential. And in other instances, as far as we know, the minds search for meaning produces little more than a jumble of disparate pictures and events. This process of tale telling and story making is remarkably similar to what transpires when language is used while a person is awake. Dreams can be thought of as a language of the night, a language that emphasizes feelings, persons, objects, and settings. The mental and emotional processes involved in dreamtime are similar in many ways to the thoughts and feelings experienced during wakefulness. People who were asked to make up a dream while they are awake produced accounts that judges could not discriminate from written reports of their night time dreams.
When someone records a dream, he or she writes a report that typically connects a series of action-oriented images that are usually visual but may include other sensory modalities as well. Many investigators believe that these reports can help people to understand their behavior, experiences, and intentions. Some psychotherapists are convinced that their clients will benefit from an understanding of their dreams because, on reflection, dream activities appear to be metaphors for the dreamer’s waking concerns; furthermore, they believe it is often helpful to find a metaphorical image or activity for a client's problem. Some writers, artists, and other creative people have made deliberate use of dream narratives and images in their work. An even larger number of individuals have claimed that scientific, technological, athletic, or artistic breakthroughs resulted from dreams that were serendipitously recalled. Some dreams are "anomalous" because they appear to bypass the ordinary constraints of time and space. Examples would be purported telepathic, clairvoyant, and precognitive dreams that appear to incorporate another person's thoughts, activities occurring at a distance, or events that later occur and match the dream.
For ten years, I conducted research on the problem of anomalous dreams at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. With Montague Ullman, Charles Honorton, and other colleagues, I published dozens of articles on this research in scientific journals. Our team used volunteer dreamers who spent one or more nights in a sleep laboratory. They were awakened whenever their brain waves and eye movements indicated that they were dreaming. In some experiments they attempted to dream about a picture postcard that would be randomly selected the next day. In other experiments, they tried to dream about a picture that had been chosen randomly once they went to bed and that was being focused upon by an experimenter in a distant room. In other experiments, they tried to dream about a picture that had been chosen randomly but kept in a sealed envelope during the night. In this way, we studied precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance in dreams under tightly controlled conditions. One night a reproduction of a painting from India was selected as the target picture for the experiment. It is named "Man with Arrows and Companions”, and portrays three men sitting out of doors near a rope coiled around a stake. The dreamer for that night had many dream reports that appeared to match the target picture. One dream report stated, "There were three men. The looked very tough. A setting that's rural”. In another dream report, the dreamer spoke of "a group of men with cowboy suits and cowboy hats. Rope imagery appears in a very prominent way”. A team of judges attempted to match dreams and target pictures without knowing the actual order. In the case of this experimental session, all three judges correctly matched the target picture and the dream reports (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989). Research participants also did their own matching before the correct picture was identified. Most of our research studies produced statistically significant results (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 2002). I had met Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) as a graduate student at Northwestern University and had maintained my interest in his theory of general systems. A system may be described as any pattern of elements in mutual interaction. The boundaries of a system depend on the activity under consideration. It was apparent to me that psi is a complex system with very wide boundaries. I speculated on the conditions that would increase the appearance of psi in our experiments, especially environmental field effects. A "field" is a matrix, or region of influence, that connects two or more points in space or time, usually by means of a force or energy, that is, something capable of manifesting a discernible change (McTaggart, 2002). A field is presumed to exist in physical reality; it usually cannot be observed directly but is inferred through its observable effects. The appearance of psi in dreams suggested that there were psychological conditions that favor its appearance. These conditions included altered states of consciousness, the relationship between the dreamer and the researcher, and the nature of the target picture used for the experiment. Various aspects of a research participant's personality also seem to be important, and have been intensively studied over the years (e.g., Palmer, 1994). However, environmental conditions such as physical fields that could influence psi phenomena, had been virtually ignored. In 1970, our research team gathered data on three of these possibilities. They were the lunar cycle, sunspot activity, and changes in the geomagnetic field (Krippner, 1975, p.127). Our research team found a relationship between all three of these factors and psi in dreams. The only one that reached statistical significance was our matching of phases of the moon. We found that psi seemed to operate better on nights of the full moon (Krippner, Becker, Cavallo, & Washburn, 1972). A few years later I met Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuroscientist. He was conducting research with geomagnetic fields and psi that was far more sophisticated than my earlier efforts. I invited him to write an article about his work and published it in a journal I was editing (Persinger, 1975). Persinger told me that the geomagnetic field has several components. The main component is created by the Earth itself, as if a huge bar magnet were running through the core of the Earth. Regular daily and monthly variations occur. These variations are due to several factors. Weather affects the daily or diurnalvariations. Lunar changes affect the monthly variations. Major variations occur due to sunspot activity, as well. Changes in the geomagnetic field can be sudden and unpredictable. The best known example of charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth's magnetic field is the aurora borealis, often called the "Northern Lights" (Tart, 1988). Persinger conducted an analysis of spontaneous cases of telepathy and clairvoyance. He found that these noted experiences were more likely to occur when the global geomagnetic activity was significantly quieter than the days before or the days after the experience. A day of low amplitude with slow, predictable variations is referred to as a quiet magnetic day. These were the days that were associated with reports of telepathy and clairvoyance (Persinger, 1985). About the same time, Marcia Adams (1986) studied the relationship between quiet magnetic days with success in remote viewing experiments, finding a positive connection. A day of sudden and large amplitude changes is referred to as a magnetically stormy day. Persinger reported a tendency for reports of poltergeist and haunting experiences to occur on these days (Persinger, 1989). Psychokinesis, anomalous effects on distant objects or activity, has been studied in the laboratory under "psi task" conditions. An analysis of some of these experiments has indicated a tendency for them to occur most frequently on magnetically stormy days (Braud & Dennis, 1989).
Possible Geomagnetic Associations with Telepathy and Clairvoyance
Our work at Maimonides Medical Center provided experimental support for the occurrence of psi in dreams. I told Persinger of my speculation that environmental factors were associated with this phenomenon. As a result of our discussion, Persinger suggested two hypotheses: 1. Nights on which psi was strong would also be nights that displayed the quietest geomagnetic activity compared to the days before and after. 2. Nights on which psi was weak or absent would not demonstrate this effect. Persinger and I tested these hypotheses in two ways. First, we examined the initial night that each of sixty - two research participants in telepathic and clairvoyance dream experiments spent at our laboratory. For our analysis, we used the results of the matchings made by the research participants themselves. We classified the matches as "High Hits”, "Low Hits”, "High Misses”, and "Low Misses”. Geomagnetic measures for the northern hemisphere were determined for each night in the study. There were too few "Misses" to yield data adequate for analysis. However, a significant difference was observed between "High Hits" and "Low Hits”. "High Hits" were more likely to occur on quiet magnetic days when there were few electrical storms and sunspots (Persinger & Krippner, 1989). Second, we tested these hypotheses with the matches made by a single research participant named William Erwin. Dr. Erwin was a psychoanalyst who had spent twenty separate, nonconsecutive nights at our laboratory. We assumed that using matches from a single subject would increase the detection of a geomagnetic effect. It would eliminate individual differences, and these were the largest source of variance in these studies. The typical procedure followed by Dr. Erwin was for him to arrive at the laboratory in time to interact with the "transmitter”. The transmitter was the person who would spend much of the night looking at the picture target. This picture was randomly selected after Dr. Erwin had gone to bed. The transmitter was isolated from Dr. Erwin. He spent the night in a distant room. After electrodes were attached to Dr. Erwin's head, Dr. Erwin parted company with the transmitter and entered a soundproof room. Two experimenters took turns watching Dr. Erwin's brain waves and eye movements on an EEG machine. Near the end of each period of rapid eye movement sleep, Dr. Erwin was awakened. He was asked to describe the dream content that he remembered. His remarks were tape recorded. So was a morning interview in which he gave associations to his dream report. Neither Dr. Erwin nor the experimenters knew the identity of the target picture. The tape-recorded remarks were typed and sent to three judges. Erwin also matched his own dreams to the target pictures when the experiment ended. Ten of the nights were "High Hits" while the remaining ten fell outside of this range. One of the "High Hits" was obtained when the target picture was "School of the Dance" by the French painter Degas. The painting portrays several girls in white ballet costumes in a dance studio. Dr. Erwin had one dream about "being in a class. The instructor was young. She was attractive”. A later dream report noted, "There was one little girl who was trying to dance with me" (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989). During the time period when Dr. Erwin was asleep, there was a significant positive correlation between geomagnetic activity and his scores. The strongest correlations between the score and the geomagnetic activity occurred during the time when most of the dream reports were collected, that is, during the latter part of the night (Krippner & Persinger, 1996).
Possible Geomagnetic Associations with Precognition
Telepathy and clairvoyance are examples of psi that involve minimal time displacement between the event and the experience. However, precognition is an example of psi that involves significant time displacement between the experience and the event. Some research studies in precognition show little orno geomagnetic effect. Alan Vaughan was one of the "sensitive" who obtained many "High Hits" in our dream studies. Dr. Vaughan had been recording his dreams since 1968 when he participated in a study focusing on precognition. He noted those that contained what he considered a detailed, literal correspondence to a future event. Most of these dreams contained three or more exact details about the future event. Vaughan sent the physicist James Spottiswoode the dates of sixty-one of his own dreams that he thought were precognitive. Spottiswoode compared the geomagnetic activity of the nights of these dreams with that of ten days before and ten days after. There was significantly less geomagnetic activity on the nights of the precognitive dreams than ten days before and ten days after. As in several earlier geomagnetic studies of self - reported precognitive dreams, such as those sent in by magazine readers and published with the date of the dream, Vaughan's dreams were not collected under "psi task" conditions. As a result, they are only suggestive of an association with geomagnetic activity. However, the association is strong enough to justify further research under better conditions. One of these dreams took place when Vaughan was living in Germany. He described the dream to me in a letter, which I received on June fourth, 1968. The dream contained many frightening episodes involving the murder of Robert Kennedy. At that time, Kennedy was trying to obtain a nomination for the presidency of the United States. On June sixth, Mr. Kennedy was assassinated (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989, p.145).
Discussion
My perspective on psi phenomena is that they may not be understandable using standard linear, reductionistic research methods. Psi research may require more holistic approaches that lend themselves to describing psi as a complex system. Once this has been done, it may be possible to describe psi in terms of specific mechanisms. In other words, psi may reflect the operations of an interactive, nonlinear, dynamic system. If so, chaos and complexity theories as well as systems methodologies are needed to study psi phenomena. It is likely that geomagnetic activity is only one of several factors in a complex system that favors the occurrence of psi phenomena. Some other factors might include humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, and ozone level. Many or all of these factors might play a role in what Ervin Laszlo (1993) calls the "psi field”. Perhaps this field can be enhanced or disrupted by environmental conditions. Furthermore, the field may operate differently for psychokinesis than it does for other psi phenomena. Two Brazilian investigators, Hernani Andrade (1967) and Carlos Tinoco (1982) also have written about field effects and parapsychology. In both instances, their models could be used to develop experimental programs. It would be premature to state that the importance of the geomagnetic field has been conclusively demonstrated. There are dozens of research studies on this topic in the literature, and most of them show an association between geomagnetic activity and psi. However, the research methodology varies from study to study. There are two types of geomagnetic measures; the first is used in some studies while the second is used in other studies. Some studies use correlations to measure the geomagnetic effect but others use comparisons between two groups. In the meantime, an analysis of nearly three thousand experimental sessions has been reported by James Spottiswoode and Edwin May (1997, Spottiswoode, 1997). Dr. Spottiswoode and Dr. May found statistically significant correlations between tri - hourly geomagnetic activity and accuracy on telepathy and clairvoyance tests. They referred to these tests as measures of "anomalous cognition”. Dr. Spottiswoode and Dr. May reported that the significant results were most evident when "anomalous cognition" was clearly present, as determined by tests conducted under psi task conditions. In other words, if there was no evidence of "anomalous cognition”, there were no significant correlations between the intensity of the geomagnetic activity and the magnitude of psi. In addition, they found that their statistical results were stronger if they took the local sidereal time into account. Could the geomagnetic effect help explain the mechanisms behind psi phenomena? Perhaps geomagnetic fields can carry psi information and influence it in some unusual manner. Perhaps geomagnetic activity can produce subtle changes in the brain that enable it to obtain information or exert influence in unusual manners. Perhaps geomagnetic activity helps consciousness produce an effect on matter through quantum processes. The domain of dreams is an ideal place to investigate these possible effects because they contain images that are not articulated or expressed during waking life. This domain represents a substrate of consciousness from which concepts emerge, a quantum world in which there is no distinction between what contemporary writers term the "mental" and the "physical," between "mind" and "matter." Field effects in psi research may reflect the ability of consciousness to organize itself coherently (McTaggart, 2002, p. 121). Lynne McTaggart (2002) synthesizes several theoreticians on this topic, proposing that consciousness may result from "a rippling cascade of subatomic coherence -- when individual quantum particles…lose their individuality and start acting as a single unit, like an army calling each soldier into line" (p. 120). In conclusion, the possible contribution of the geomagnetic field to psi phenomena makes it imperative that researchers carefully record the date and hour of their experiments. Without this information, it is impossible to make the greatest possible use of experimental data. In a field where financial resources are meager, it is essential to utilize as completely as possible those data that are obtained under "psi task" conditions. I suspect that psi is a complex system. If so, the psychological, sociological, physiological, and environmental aspects of this system all of which deserve intense and sustained investigation.
References:Adams, M.H. (1986). Variability in remote - viewing performance: Possible relationship to the geomagnetic field. In D.H. Weiner & D.I. Radin (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1985 (p.25). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Andrade, H.G. (1967). Experimental parapsychology. Sao Paulo: Edicao Calvario. von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory: Essays on its foundation and development (rev. ed.). New York: George Brazillier. Braud, W.G., & Dennis, S.P. (1989). Geophysical variables and behavior: LVIII. Autonomic activity, hemolysis, and biological psychokinesis: Possible relationships with geomagnetic field activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68, 1243 - 1254. Krippner, S. (1975). Song of the siren: A Parapsychological odyssey. New York: Harper and Row. Krippner, S., Becker, A., Cavallo, M., & Washburn, B. (1972, Fall). Electrophysiological studies of ESP in dreams: Lunar cycle differences in 80 telepathy sessions. Human Dimensions, pp.14 - 19. Krippner, S., & Persinger, M. (1996). Evidence for enhanced congruence between dreams and distant target material during periods of decreased geomagnetic activity. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10, 487 - 493. Laszlo, E. (1993). The creative cosmos . Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books. McTaggart, L. (2002). The field: The quest for the secret force of the universe. New York: Quill/HarperCollins. Palmer, J. (1994). Explorations with the perceptual ESP test. Journal of Parapsychology, 58, 115 - 147. Persinger, M.A. (1975). ELF field meditation in spontaneous psi events. Direct information transfer or conditioned elicitation? Psychoenergetic Systems, 3, 155 - 169. Persinger, M.A. (1985). Geophysical variables and behavior: XXX. Intense paranormal activities occur during days of quite, global geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 320 - 322. Persinger, M.A. (1989). Psi phenomena and temporal lobe activity: The geomagnetic factor. In L.A. Henkel & R. Berger (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1988 (pp.121 - 156). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Persinger, M.A., & Krippner, S. (1989). Dream ESP experiments and geomagnetic activity. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 83, 101 - 116. Spottiswoode, S.J.P. (1997). Apparent association between effect size in free response anomalous cognition experiments and local sidereal time. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11, 109 - 122. Spottiswoode, S.J.P., & May, E. (1997, June). Evidence that free response anomalous cognitive performance depends upon local sidereal time and geomagnetic fluctuations (Abstract). Presentation Abstracts, Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, p.8. Tart, C.T. (1988). Geomagnetic effects on GESP: Two studies. Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research, 82, 193 - 216.Tinoco, C.A. (1982). The biological organizing model. Curitiba: Grafica Veja. Ullman, M., Krippner, S., & Vaughan, A. (1989). Dream telepathy: Experiments in nocturnal ESP (2nd ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Ullman, M., Krippner, S., & Vaughan, A. (1989). Dream telepathy: Experiments in nocturnal ESP (3rd ed.). Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads. *Preparation of this paper was supported by the Chair for Consciousness Research, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco, California. **Alan Watts Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San Francisco, California.
Parapsychology is the scientific study of anomalous interactions. These interactions may be between organisms and their environment or between organisms and other organisms. They are anomalous because they seem to disregard mainstream science's notions of time, space, and energy. Parapsychology is sometimes called "psychical research”, or "psi research”. The word "psi" refers to the anomalous interactions studied by parapsychologists. Examples of these interactions are reports of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, life after death, and past - life experiences. Each of these reports can be studied in several ways. Parapsychologists use questionnaires, interviews, and field observations. In each of these cases, there is a possibility that conventional scientific explanations can account for the report. Some of these explanations are subtle sensory or motor activity, misinterpretation, poor memory for an event, and deliberate fraud. If an investigation systematically eliminates conventional scientific explanations, that research is performed under "psi task conditions”. Phenomena obtained under psi task conditions can be regarded as "anomalous" because they appear to transcend the constraints of time, space, or energy. Over the past century, considerable research has been conducted in an attempt to understand psi phenomena and to determine whether they are worthy of continued attention and investigation. The understanding of the conditions under which psi phenomena occur would accelerate acceptance of these phenomena as legitimate areas of investigation by mainstream science.
Complex Systems and Field Effects
Dreams are series of images that occur during sleep; if recalled, they are reported by the dreamer in narrative form. The night's first period of dreaming generally begins 90 minutes after a person falls asleep. The neurons at the base of the skull start to fire a random barrage of high voltage impulses, unleashing a cascade of potent chemicals that pour into the forebrain. The visual and motor centers are stimulated, triggering memories that are presented and combined in original, vivid, and often baffling ways. Immediately, the brain's mind creates a story that will make sense of these fragments, either providing a pre-existing script which serves as a template for the images, or producing a narrative on the spot that matches -- as best it can -- the stored memories that have been evoked.
Sometimes these stories reflect basic problems in living with which the dreamer has wrestled for years. At other times they reflect the events of the past few days or hours, some of them trivial, some of them consequential. And in other instances, as far as we know, the minds search for meaning produces little more than a jumble of disparate pictures and events. This process of tale telling and story making is remarkably similar to what transpires when language is used while a person is awake. Dreams can be thought of as a language of the night, a language that emphasizes feelings, persons, objects, and settings. The mental and emotional processes involved in dreamtime are similar in many ways to the thoughts and feelings experienced during wakefulness. People who were asked to make up a dream while they are awake produced accounts that judges could not discriminate from written reports of their night time dreams.
When someone records a dream, he or she writes a report that typically connects a series of action-oriented images that are usually visual but may include other sensory modalities as well. Many investigators believe that these reports can help people to understand their behavior, experiences, and intentions. Some psychotherapists are convinced that their clients will benefit from an understanding of their dreams because, on reflection, dream activities appear to be metaphors for the dreamer’s waking concerns; furthermore, they believe it is often helpful to find a metaphorical image or activity for a client's problem. Some writers, artists, and other creative people have made deliberate use of dream narratives and images in their work. An even larger number of individuals have claimed that scientific, technological, athletic, or artistic breakthroughs resulted from dreams that were serendipitously recalled. Some dreams are "anomalous" because they appear to bypass the ordinary constraints of time and space. Examples would be purported telepathic, clairvoyant, and precognitive dreams that appear to incorporate another person's thoughts, activities occurring at a distance, or events that later occur and match the dream.
For ten years, I conducted research on the problem of anomalous dreams at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. With Montague Ullman, Charles Honorton, and other colleagues, I published dozens of articles on this research in scientific journals. Our team used volunteer dreamers who spent one or more nights in a sleep laboratory. They were awakened whenever their brain waves and eye movements indicated that they were dreaming. In some experiments they attempted to dream about a picture postcard that would be randomly selected the next day. In other experiments, they tried to dream about a picture that had been chosen randomly once they went to bed and that was being focused upon by an experimenter in a distant room. In other experiments, they tried to dream about a picture that had been chosen randomly but kept in a sealed envelope during the night. In this way, we studied precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance in dreams under tightly controlled conditions. One night a reproduction of a painting from India was selected as the target picture for the experiment. It is named "Man with Arrows and Companions”, and portrays three men sitting out of doors near a rope coiled around a stake. The dreamer for that night had many dream reports that appeared to match the target picture. One dream report stated, "There were three men. The looked very tough. A setting that's rural”. In another dream report, the dreamer spoke of "a group of men with cowboy suits and cowboy hats. Rope imagery appears in a very prominent way”. A team of judges attempted to match dreams and target pictures without knowing the actual order. In the case of this experimental session, all three judges correctly matched the target picture and the dream reports (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989). Research participants also did their own matching before the correct picture was identified. Most of our research studies produced statistically significant results (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 2002). I had met Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) as a graduate student at Northwestern University and had maintained my interest in his theory of general systems. A system may be described as any pattern of elements in mutual interaction. The boundaries of a system depend on the activity under consideration. It was apparent to me that psi is a complex system with very wide boundaries. I speculated on the conditions that would increase the appearance of psi in our experiments, especially environmental field effects. A "field" is a matrix, or region of influence, that connects two or more points in space or time, usually by means of a force or energy, that is, something capable of manifesting a discernible change (McTaggart, 2002). A field is presumed to exist in physical reality; it usually cannot be observed directly but is inferred through its observable effects. The appearance of psi in dreams suggested that there were psychological conditions that favor its appearance. These conditions included altered states of consciousness, the relationship between the dreamer and the researcher, and the nature of the target picture used for the experiment. Various aspects of a research participant's personality also seem to be important, and have been intensively studied over the years (e.g., Palmer, 1994). However, environmental conditions such as physical fields that could influence psi phenomena, had been virtually ignored. In 1970, our research team gathered data on three of these possibilities. They were the lunar cycle, sunspot activity, and changes in the geomagnetic field (Krippner, 1975, p.127). Our research team found a relationship between all three of these factors and psi in dreams. The only one that reached statistical significance was our matching of phases of the moon. We found that psi seemed to operate better on nights of the full moon (Krippner, Becker, Cavallo, & Washburn, 1972). A few years later I met Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuroscientist. He was conducting research with geomagnetic fields and psi that was far more sophisticated than my earlier efforts. I invited him to write an article about his work and published it in a journal I was editing (Persinger, 1975). Persinger told me that the geomagnetic field has several components. The main component is created by the Earth itself, as if a huge bar magnet were running through the core of the Earth. Regular daily and monthly variations occur. These variations are due to several factors. Weather affects the daily or diurnalvariations. Lunar changes affect the monthly variations. Major variations occur due to sunspot activity, as well. Changes in the geomagnetic field can be sudden and unpredictable. The best known example of charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth's magnetic field is the aurora borealis, often called the "Northern Lights" (Tart, 1988). Persinger conducted an analysis of spontaneous cases of telepathy and clairvoyance. He found that these noted experiences were more likely to occur when the global geomagnetic activity was significantly quieter than the days before or the days after the experience. A day of low amplitude with slow, predictable variations is referred to as a quiet magnetic day. These were the days that were associated with reports of telepathy and clairvoyance (Persinger, 1985). About the same time, Marcia Adams (1986) studied the relationship between quiet magnetic days with success in remote viewing experiments, finding a positive connection. A day of sudden and large amplitude changes is referred to as a magnetically stormy day. Persinger reported a tendency for reports of poltergeist and haunting experiences to occur on these days (Persinger, 1989). Psychokinesis, anomalous effects on distant objects or activity, has been studied in the laboratory under "psi task" conditions. An analysis of some of these experiments has indicated a tendency for them to occur most frequently on magnetically stormy days (Braud & Dennis, 1989).
Possible Geomagnetic Associations with Telepathy and Clairvoyance
Our work at Maimonides Medical Center provided experimental support for the occurrence of psi in dreams. I told Persinger of my speculation that environmental factors were associated with this phenomenon. As a result of our discussion, Persinger suggested two hypotheses: 1. Nights on which psi was strong would also be nights that displayed the quietest geomagnetic activity compared to the days before and after. 2. Nights on which psi was weak or absent would not demonstrate this effect. Persinger and I tested these hypotheses in two ways. First, we examined the initial night that each of sixty - two research participants in telepathic and clairvoyance dream experiments spent at our laboratory. For our analysis, we used the results of the matchings made by the research participants themselves. We classified the matches as "High Hits”, "Low Hits”, "High Misses”, and "Low Misses”. Geomagnetic measures for the northern hemisphere were determined for each night in the study. There were too few "Misses" to yield data adequate for analysis. However, a significant difference was observed between "High Hits" and "Low Hits”. "High Hits" were more likely to occur on quiet magnetic days when there were few electrical storms and sunspots (Persinger & Krippner, 1989). Second, we tested these hypotheses with the matches made by a single research participant named William Erwin. Dr. Erwin was a psychoanalyst who had spent twenty separate, nonconsecutive nights at our laboratory. We assumed that using matches from a single subject would increase the detection of a geomagnetic effect. It would eliminate individual differences, and these were the largest source of variance in these studies. The typical procedure followed by Dr. Erwin was for him to arrive at the laboratory in time to interact with the "transmitter”. The transmitter was the person who would spend much of the night looking at the picture target. This picture was randomly selected after Dr. Erwin had gone to bed. The transmitter was isolated from Dr. Erwin. He spent the night in a distant room. After electrodes were attached to Dr. Erwin's head, Dr. Erwin parted company with the transmitter and entered a soundproof room. Two experimenters took turns watching Dr. Erwin's brain waves and eye movements on an EEG machine. Near the end of each period of rapid eye movement sleep, Dr. Erwin was awakened. He was asked to describe the dream content that he remembered. His remarks were tape recorded. So was a morning interview in which he gave associations to his dream report. Neither Dr. Erwin nor the experimenters knew the identity of the target picture. The tape-recorded remarks were typed and sent to three judges. Erwin also matched his own dreams to the target pictures when the experiment ended. Ten of the nights were "High Hits" while the remaining ten fell outside of this range. One of the "High Hits" was obtained when the target picture was "School of the Dance" by the French painter Degas. The painting portrays several girls in white ballet costumes in a dance studio. Dr. Erwin had one dream about "being in a class. The instructor was young. She was attractive”. A later dream report noted, "There was one little girl who was trying to dance with me" (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989). During the time period when Dr. Erwin was asleep, there was a significant positive correlation between geomagnetic activity and his scores. The strongest correlations between the score and the geomagnetic activity occurred during the time when most of the dream reports were collected, that is, during the latter part of the night (Krippner & Persinger, 1996).
Possible Geomagnetic Associations with Precognition
Telepathy and clairvoyance are examples of psi that involve minimal time displacement between the event and the experience. However, precognition is an example of psi that involves significant time displacement between the experience and the event. Some research studies in precognition show little orno geomagnetic effect. Alan Vaughan was one of the "sensitive" who obtained many "High Hits" in our dream studies. Dr. Vaughan had been recording his dreams since 1968 when he participated in a study focusing on precognition. He noted those that contained what he considered a detailed, literal correspondence to a future event. Most of these dreams contained three or more exact details about the future event. Vaughan sent the physicist James Spottiswoode the dates of sixty-one of his own dreams that he thought were precognitive. Spottiswoode compared the geomagnetic activity of the nights of these dreams with that of ten days before and ten days after. There was significantly less geomagnetic activity on the nights of the precognitive dreams than ten days before and ten days after. As in several earlier geomagnetic studies of self - reported precognitive dreams, such as those sent in by magazine readers and published with the date of the dream, Vaughan's dreams were not collected under "psi task" conditions. As a result, they are only suggestive of an association with geomagnetic activity. However, the association is strong enough to justify further research under better conditions. One of these dreams took place when Vaughan was living in Germany. He described the dream to me in a letter, which I received on June fourth, 1968. The dream contained many frightening episodes involving the murder of Robert Kennedy. At that time, Kennedy was trying to obtain a nomination for the presidency of the United States. On June sixth, Mr. Kennedy was assassinated (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1989, p.145).
Discussion
My perspective on psi phenomena is that they may not be understandable using standard linear, reductionistic research methods. Psi research may require more holistic approaches that lend themselves to describing psi as a complex system. Once this has been done, it may be possible to describe psi in terms of specific mechanisms. In other words, psi may reflect the operations of an interactive, nonlinear, dynamic system. If so, chaos and complexity theories as well as systems methodologies are needed to study psi phenomena. It is likely that geomagnetic activity is only one of several factors in a complex system that favors the occurrence of psi phenomena. Some other factors might include humidity, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, and ozone level. Many or all of these factors might play a role in what Ervin Laszlo (1993) calls the "psi field”. Perhaps this field can be enhanced or disrupted by environmental conditions. Furthermore, the field may operate differently for psychokinesis than it does for other psi phenomena. Two Brazilian investigators, Hernani Andrade (1967) and Carlos Tinoco (1982) also have written about field effects and parapsychology. In both instances, their models could be used to develop experimental programs. It would be premature to state that the importance of the geomagnetic field has been conclusively demonstrated. There are dozens of research studies on this topic in the literature, and most of them show an association between geomagnetic activity and psi. However, the research methodology varies from study to study. There are two types of geomagnetic measures; the first is used in some studies while the second is used in other studies. Some studies use correlations to measure the geomagnetic effect but others use comparisons between two groups. In the meantime, an analysis of nearly three thousand experimental sessions has been reported by James Spottiswoode and Edwin May (1997, Spottiswoode, 1997). Dr. Spottiswoode and Dr. May found statistically significant correlations between tri - hourly geomagnetic activity and accuracy on telepathy and clairvoyance tests. They referred to these tests as measures of "anomalous cognition”. Dr. Spottiswoode and Dr. May reported that the significant results were most evident when "anomalous cognition" was clearly present, as determined by tests conducted under psi task conditions. In other words, if there was no evidence of "anomalous cognition”, there were no significant correlations between the intensity of the geomagnetic activity and the magnitude of psi. In addition, they found that their statistical results were stronger if they took the local sidereal time into account. Could the geomagnetic effect help explain the mechanisms behind psi phenomena? Perhaps geomagnetic fields can carry psi information and influence it in some unusual manner. Perhaps geomagnetic activity can produce subtle changes in the brain that enable it to obtain information or exert influence in unusual manners. Perhaps geomagnetic activity helps consciousness produce an effect on matter through quantum processes. The domain of dreams is an ideal place to investigate these possible effects because they contain images that are not articulated or expressed during waking life. This domain represents a substrate of consciousness from which concepts emerge, a quantum world in which there is no distinction between what contemporary writers term the "mental" and the "physical," between "mind" and "matter." Field effects in psi research may reflect the ability of consciousness to organize itself coherently (McTaggart, 2002, p. 121). Lynne McTaggart (2002) synthesizes several theoreticians on this topic, proposing that consciousness may result from "a rippling cascade of subatomic coherence -- when individual quantum particles…lose their individuality and start acting as a single unit, like an army calling each soldier into line" (p. 120). In conclusion, the possible contribution of the geomagnetic field to psi phenomena makes it imperative that researchers carefully record the date and hour of their experiments. Without this information, it is impossible to make the greatest possible use of experimental data. In a field where financial resources are meager, it is essential to utilize as completely as possible those data that are obtained under "psi task" conditions. I suspect that psi is a complex system. If so, the psychological, sociological, physiological, and environmental aspects of this system all of which deserve intense and sustained investigation.
References
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Correspondence to Dr.Krippner:
skrippner@saybrook.edu.com
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