Bridging Psychological Science and Transpersonal Spirit a primer of Transpersonal Psychology

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  Rhine’s Zener-ESP and PK Experiments of 1920-1960. The best known telepathy experiments are the ESP “forced-choice” card tests pioneered by J. B. Rhine and colleagues at Duke University (J. B. Rhine, 1964, 1977) involving hundreds of participants in thousands of individual trials from 1920’s to 1965. The Pearce-Pratt Distance Series of ESP Tests of 1933-34 were conducted during this period. By the 1940’s there had been numerous experimental reports confirming Rhine’s results (Pratt et al., 1966). There have been numerous experimental reports confirming J. B. Rhine’s ESP experimental results (see Pratt et al., 1966).
  

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  Dream Telepathy Experiments of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most successful, systematic “free-response” telepathy studies were conducted from 1966 to 1972 in the dream-research laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center (Child, 1985; Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughn, 1973). “Results suggested that if someone is asked to ‘send’ mental images to a dreaming person, the dreamer will sometimes incorporate those images into the dream” (Radin, 1997, p. 69).
  

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  Schmidt’s REG-ESP and PK Experiments. Helmut Schmidt’s REG experiments have also successfully been replicated by several independent investigators (Jahn, 1982; Nelson & Radin, 2001).
  

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  PEAR’s REG-PK Experiments. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory has successfully replicated the REG-PK experiments (Jahn, Dunne, Nelson, Dobyns, & Bradish, 2001). Statistical replicability of psi has also been demonstrated by use of the statistical technique known as meta-analysis
  

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  Remote Viewing Studies of the 1970s and 1980’s. Some of the most successful ESP studies were the government-sponsored studies in remote viewing or “anomalous cognition” (called “STARGATE”) designed and developed by the U.S. Army “for the specific purpose of using military intelligence personnel as psychics, to collect intelligence and to evaluate the degree to which our enemies might be capable of using psychics against us” (McMoneagle, 1998, p. 19). The research program in remote-viewing was conducted at what was then the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) from 1973-1988 (Bisaha & Dunne, 1979; Jahn & Dunne, 1987; Targ & Puthoff, 1977; Marks, 1986). The government-sponsored remote-viewing research project was continued at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) from 1989-1993 (Utts, 2001), and is now continuing at the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at Palo Alto (CA). Results of the overall 1973-1988 remote viewing experiments conducted by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff (1977) at the Stanford Research Institute “are consistent with results of similar experiments in other laboratories” (Utts, 2001, p. 121), including the experiments of Bisaha & Dunne (1979), Jahn & Dunne (1987), and Honorton & Ferrari (1989).
  

The results…show that remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not in such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomena. It is unlikely that methodological problems could account for the remarkable consistency of results. (Utts, 2001, p. 131)

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  Ganzfeld Telepathy Experiments from 1974 to 1997. From 1974 to 1997, some 2,549 ganzfeld sessions were reported in at least 40 publications by researchers around the world ….After a 1985 meta-analysis (Hyman & Honorton, 1986)… [and] a six-year replication…[and] publication of autoganzfeld results in 1990…[and] the independent replication of these results…we are fully justified in having very high confidence that people sometimes get small amount of specific information from a distance without the use of the ordinary senses. Psi effects do occur in the ganzfeld. (Radin, 1997, pp. 73-88)
  

Smith et al., (2003) in the classic textbook Atkinson & Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology state:

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  Recurrent Spontaneous Psi Phenomena. Semi-experimental or recurrent spontaneous evidence of psi phenomena that occurs repeatedly in connection with a particular person or location outside a laboratory setting also provide evidence of replication of a phenomenon and insight into the nature, limits, and causes of psi functioning (Braude, 1997). There have been phenomena that have lasted over 20 years that have been investigated.
  

Three of the “best” kinds of evidence for psi functioning will be briefly described with special focus on the experimental designs used: (1) U. S. government-sponsored emote viewing “Star Gate” telepathy experiments of the 1970’s and 1980’s, (2) the Ganzfeld telepathy experiments from 1974 to 1997, and (3) Helmut Schmit’s automated random event generator PK experiments.