The fact that our thoughts influence our behavior is a fundamental principle in psychology. And in an indirect fashion though our behavior our thoughts can influence others and the material world. This can also occur on an unconscious level. If we expect something to happen, we often act outside of our awareness in such a way as to bring that about – a self-fulfilling prophesy. But can we directly influence the nonliving material world with our thoughts alone? Certainly, we have all heard stories about people causing something to happen through the power of their thoughts. In myth and religion supernatural figures do it all of the time.
One of the best-known producers of mind over matter effects was Israeli mentalist/psychic Uri Geller. In public demonstrations around the world Geller exhibited the ability, using mental energy only, to bend or plasticize steel, platinum and other metals by softly stroking them; change the readout on a Geiger counter, move a compass needle, dematerialize objects, make things fly through the room and broken watches and clocks run again, influence a magnetometer, and imprint a picture on a roll of photographic film using only mental energy. Although he admitted that early in his career he mixed standard magic tricks in with his PK demonstrations, in later years he gave many impressive demonstrations in scientific laboratories where his activities were closely observed and controlled.
Although well-known ESP skeptic and magician James Randi claimed that Geller deceived the scientists who investigated him by employing sleight of hand tricks, other magicians strongly supported the legitimacy of his PK effects, notably parapsychologist and magician William E. Cox, who had once organized a committee within the Society of American Magicians to investigate false claims of ESP. Cox pointed out that given the controlled conditions imposed on Geller, including frame-by-frame videotaping from multiple angles with close-up lenses, it would be easy to catch deception by even the best of magicians. Before his work with remote viewing in the Stargate program Ingo Swann had demonstrated psychokinesis ability under experimental controls at Gertrude Schmeidler’s laboratory at the City College of New York.
On a personal note, in 1998 while attending a hypnotherapy conference in San Francisco I was intrigued by one of the workshops on the agenda, a “spoon bending party” being conducted by Jack Houck. Michael Schmicker (2000) describes his experience attending such a “party,” which was very similar to my own. He and his brother John were among several hundred excited, expectant people gathered in the ballroom in a large circle around Jack to hear his instructions. They had been told they could bring their own silverware if they wanted or could pick a fork or spoon from the big box of cutlery Jack carries to each event. (Since the event I attended was part of a three-day conference, we didn’t have the opportunity to bring our own. I did test some of the silverware in his box and couldn’t bend any of it.) There is no “mumbo-jumbo,” Schmicker pointed out, “no New Age incantations, no dimmed lights, no elaborate formalities.” Jack gave a brief history of his PK research, showed samples of spoons and forks bent by people in earlier PK parties, went over his theory of how he thinks PK is produced, and led them through the three steps they were to follow to hopefully produce bent spoons. These were: (1) Make a mental connection with what you want to affect; that is, focus your attention and concentration on the spoon. (2) Command what you want to happen by shouting “Bend! Bend! Bend!! (3) Release, let go mentally, let it happen. Within 20-30 seconds of shouting their commands, people were bending spoons. Schmicker and his brother quickly mastered “kindergarten” level spoon bending which involved waiting till they felt the spoon go warm and soft, then twirling and bending the handle in tight circles.
Unlike Schmicker and his brother, I initially didn’t even get to this point. My spoon simply didn’t bend. This was disappointing but not surprising. I simply do not seem to have a “psychic” bone in my body. I signaled Jack in the crowd of excited participants, and he came over. He placed his hands lightly on my forearms but did not exert any direct physical force or pressure. What it felt like was some kind of energy travelling down to my finger. My spoon began to feel warm, and I easily bent it with barely any effort. I have kept my bent spoon as a reminder of what I personally experienced.
PK research
This supposed ability to influence the material world directly through thought alone was one of the first things that Rhine and other early parapsychologists studied in the laboratory. The principle research procedure they followed to do this involved dice. A subject chooses a particular die face and then attempts to mentally influence it to come up when one or more dice are tossed. If the subject’s intention matches the resulting face, then a hit is scored. With one die, a hit would occur by chance alone one in six times.
Over the years a large number of such studies were conducted, but no definitive conclusions emerged. In 1989 Radin and psychologist Diane Ferrari searched all English language journals for reports investigating whether mental intention could cause a preselected die face to land face up after being tossed. For each study they calculated a 50-percent-equivalent hit rate as well as noting the presence or absence of a series of 13 quality criteria, such as whether automatic recording was employed, whether witnesses were present, and whether control tests were performed. They discovered 73 relevant publications containing reports of 52 investigators involving 148 different experiments with a total of 2,569 subjects and 2.6 million dice throws.
There were also 31 control studies involving just over 150,000 dice throws in which subjects did not attempt to mentally mental influence the results. The overall hit rate for the control studies was 50.02 percent, just as expected. However, the overall hit rate for all the experimental studies was 51.2 percent. While this may appear to be quite insignificant, statistically it results in odds against chance of more than a billion to one. To eliminate the possibility of a “file drawer” problem, Radin and Ferrari calculated that to bring the odds against chance of a hit rate down to less than 20 to one, for each published study there would have had to be 121 additional, unreported and unsuccessful studies involving 52 investigators (Radin, 1997).
In the 1960’s physicist Helmut Schmidt developed a much more sophisticated method of investigating small scale psychokinesis utilizing random-number generators (RNGs). A RNG is an electronic circuit relying on a random source such as electronic noise or radioactive decay to create sequences of bits (the numbers I and 0). Because RNGs are computer-controlled the random sequence can be perfectly recorded. Modern RNGs are highly sophisticated, employing features such as electromagnetic shielding, environmental fail-safe alarms, and fully automatic data recording. Subjects attempt to mentally influence the RNG’s output so that in a sequence of predefined length it produces, say, more 1’s than 0’s. Often they get feedback about their efforts in the form of a digital display, audio feedback, computer graphics, or the movement of a robot’s arms.
Some of the most extensive RNG PK research has been conducted at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR Lab). In 1997 engineer Robert Jahn and his colleagues published a review of 12 years of experiments conducted there involving over 100 subjects. What they found was a PK effect approximately equal to 1 bit out of 10,000 being shifted away from chance due to mental influence. While this seems like a tiny effect, over the entire database it resulted in odds against chance of 35 trillion to 1.
In 2000 a large-scale study was jointly conducted by the PEAR Lab and two German labs to attempt to replicate the PEAR results. Similar research design and equipment were used for a preplanned series of trials. Although this study failed to provide a significant outcome, the results were significantly similar to the original PEAR findings with odds against chance of 20 to 1. Radin observed that “while the outcome of the mega-trial was not independently successful in demonstrating PK effects, there was evidence that the same basic trend was repeated.”
Radin in 2006 conducted a meta-analysis of all known PK studies involving the RNG procedure published up to then involving 490 studies by 90 researchers. While the overall effect seemed small in magnitude, it was nevertheless associated with odds against chance of 50,000 to 1. In terms of a potential file drawer problem, each of the 90 researchers would have had to conduct an additional 29 nonsignificant studies and fail to report any of them. Radin found in this meta-analysis that higher quality studies did not result in significantly lowered effects thus reinforcing his conclusion that chance, selective reporting, and variations in study quality were not viable explanations for the positive results.
He points out that while these studies seem to imply that mind literally influences matter, there are alternative interpretations. Perhaps mind and matter are like two sides of the same coin. He suggests that if we were to take a ribbon and write mind on the inside and matter on the outside and wiggle the ribbon, we would find very strong correlations between mind and matter, yet in a fundamental sense “never the twain shall meet.” However, suppose that unknown to us a mischievous friend cuts the ribbon, creates a half-twist, and carefully tapes it back together. Later as we ponder the “abyss” between mind and matter, we absent-mindedly trace a finger along the matter side of the ribbon. To our astonishment, we find that our finger ends up on the mind side. The ribbon had been transformed into a Mobius strip by our friend’s half-twist. The lesson, Radin says, is that “sometimes simple twists in conventional concepts can unify things that appear to be quite different, like mind and matter.”
Although some people believe that consciousness may be the unifying “substance” from which mind and matter arise, Radin believes that defining one mystery in terms of another isn’t particularly illuminating.
“At this point, all we can say is that when you begin to pry apart the mind-matter interface, it’s as though that crack releases a dazzling and profoundly mystifying light.
Schmicker, M. (2000). Best Evidence
Radin, D. (2009). Entangled Minds