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Learning ESP
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00:00Men on the Moon. The dream became reality in 1969. A number of the astronauts who would travel to the
00:10moon brought back stories of special perceptions they had in space. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell was
00:18so intrigued that on his 1971 voyage to the moon, he attempted a secret experiment. Mitchell tried
00:25to send telepathic images to four colleagues on Earth. The results were analyzed by mathematicians.
00:32They concluded that the odds against duplicating Mitchell's results by chance were 3,000 to 1.
00:39You ready? Okay, pay attention now. Think of what I'm thinking of. Here I go. The same simple experiment
00:47Edgar Mitchell performed from the moon has been performed by amateurs and scientists on Earth
00:52for 50 years. The results argue persuasively that something more than chance is at work.
01:00They also indicate that at one time or another, most people exhibit some ESP power. Children
01:08are often particularly sensitive. Perhaps that's because no one has taught them to laugh at ESP.
01:14There are newer, more sophisticated ways of testing ESP. Tests that seem to confirm some ability in people
01:27beyond what is considered to be the normal range. Investigators are beginning to find ways to perfect
01:34those abilities. ESP is real, they believe, and it can be taught to almost anyone who is willing to learn.
01:44Men are taught that they have five senses.
02:14Extrasensory perception has been measured in laboratories. Many scientists believe it can be taught.
02:27This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose
02:33is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries
02:38we will examine.
02:42Do you know why you're here?
02:43Yeah.
02:44Why? Why are we here?
02:46To talk about ESP.
02:47ESP. What is ESP?
02:49Extrasensory perception.
02:51What does that mean?
02:53I don't know.
02:55You know what I mean?
02:55You can predict the future.
02:56Predict the future?
02:57You can read people's minds.
02:59Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Good. Okay.
03:02What did I just do?
03:04How do you know?
03:07I heard it.
03:07I heard it.
03:08You heard it and you saw me. That's right. You used two senses, right? We have five senses.
03:13We'll just use two of them. Hearing is one. Seeing is one. Smelling is one. Tasting is...
03:19Right. Okay. You get the idea. Feeling. Exactly. Exactly. My hand is on your arm, right?
03:24How do you know?
03:25I can hear it.
03:26You can feel it and you can see it.
03:28We can see it. Two senses working. Okay. We have five senses.
03:30Now, there's a possibility that we may be able to tell each other things without using the senses.
03:39Without hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling.
03:42Through our mind.
03:42That's right. Through your mind. That's right. That means extrasensory communication.
03:46That means outside of the five senses. Okay? There's a possibility.
03:50Okay. Here we go. Each take a pad.
03:52The children are fourth graders from a Los Angeles area public school.
03:57They were selected on the basis of their enthusiasm for the experiment.
04:01None has had his ESP ability tested before.
04:05The test was designed by the late Dr. Joseph Rine, a pioneer ESP researcher at Duke University.
04:12I have here a deck of 25 cards.
04:16And these are the symbols. Okay?
04:18Okay. This is a wave.
04:20There's a star.
04:22There's a plus or a cross.
04:24A circle.
04:25And a square. Okay?
04:27Here's what we're going to do.
04:28We're going to see if it's possible for you to read my mind.
04:32To see if we can communicate.
04:33There's no problem because it's going to be a very simple procedure that I'll explain how I'll do it.
04:39Okay?
04:39I'm laying the deck down here.
04:42I'm going to pick up one card at a time.
04:44Okay.
04:45When I pick it up and look at it, I will concentrate on the picture that's on the card and I will say, ready.
04:51Okay?
04:52As soon as you get a hunch or a feeling or an idea of what that picture is, put a check on number one under the image that you think I'm looking at.
05:02Is that clear?
05:03Yes.
05:04Okay?
05:05All right.
05:05Let's begin then.
05:06Professor Rine gave this identical test to thousands of persons during his three decades of ESP research.
05:14With the aid of statisticians, Rine plotted the scores that could be attributed to luck and the scores that couldn't.
05:21In this test, two children scored much higher than random chance would dictate.
05:27One child did worse than he might have done by simply guessing.
05:30Yeah, put a check under it.
05:31Investigators call this phenomenon a negative ESP effect.
05:36Ready.
05:37The test was given a second time.
05:43Ready.
05:4623.
05:49Ready.
05:5424.
05:57Ready.
05:58Ready.
06:00Okay, you got them all?
06:10Yeah.
06:11Yeah.
06:13Okay, tell you what we're going to do this time.
06:14We all have the same cards.
06:15We all have a group of five cards.
06:18After the second run-through, it was apparent that some children who did well the first time had fallen behind.
06:25Other children, who scored poorly at first, did much better the second time.
06:31A new test was improvised to see if the children who were improving would continue to do so.
06:37I'm going to take one card, and I'm going to study it.
06:43I'm going to hold it right here.
06:44You don't know what it is.
06:45I'm going to study it.
06:46I want you to pick out of your hand the card that you think I'm holding.
06:51When you think you know what I'm holding, pick it out of your hand.
06:55Don't let anybody see what you're doing.
06:57And put it on the table.
06:59Are we all done?
07:00Okay, we've all made a choice?
07:02Yes.
07:02Okay, here goes my card.
07:04Now, turn over and let's see what you got.
07:09Very interesting.
07:10Okay, four of you picked up my message.
07:13But maybe I did a pretty good job sending messages that time.
07:17Yeah.
07:17Four of you got my message, right?
07:20Uh-huh.
07:20Okay, let's do it again.
07:22Shuffle them up.
07:23Okay, very good.
07:24All right, I'm going to pick a card.
07:27I'm going to concentrate on it very hard.
07:31See if you can tell what I'm looking at.
07:37I'm staring at it very hard.
07:39We all got the message?
07:40Yes.
07:41Okay, here we go.
07:42Turn them over.
07:44I have a circle.
07:46Oh.
07:47Okay.
07:48All right, we did three that time.
07:51I did a little bit of the first time, didn't I?
07:53You got both of them.
07:54How many got it twice in a row?
07:56Just the one.
07:57Okay.
07:58Relax.
07:59This is not hard work.
08:01This is not hard work except for me.
08:04Okay, we're ready?
08:06All right, I'm picking a card right now.
08:09I have it.
08:11Everybody down?
08:13Everybody got a card down.
08:14Turn it over.
08:15Let's see what you got.
08:16Okay, well, I didn't do very well that time.
08:19Look at how many of you thought I was holding a star.
08:22I got three out of three.
08:24In the first written test, J.J. scored lowest.
08:29Now, it looked like he was coming on strong.
08:33I am making a choice.
08:35Choosing.
08:37Okay, here we go.
08:39I'm looking at a card.
08:40All right, now, I may, it may be any one of the five.
08:44I'm not going to try to trick you or anything like that.
08:46It may be any one of the five, and I have it.
08:50I have it.
08:53Be careful now.
08:54See if you can get what I've got here.
08:57Everybody down?
08:58Yeah.
08:58Turn them over.
08:59Let's see what you got.
09:00J.J., you did it again.
09:02Oh!
09:03That's four in a row.
09:04That's remarkable.
09:07Okay, very interesting.
09:08One more time.
09:09Okay, I'm making a choice.
09:12I have just chosen a card.
09:14Make a choice.
09:16Make a choice and put it down.
09:18Okay, you ready?
09:20All right, let's see how we do.
09:21Turn it over.
09:24J.J., that's five in a row.
09:26Five in a row.
09:28You sure you're not reading my mind?
09:30You must be.
09:31So something's happening between J.J. and I.
09:33You're so close.
09:34There's a message taking place.
09:36Very interesting.
09:37Okay.
09:38It seems that even in an experiment as simple and as primitive as this,
09:42some patterns do develop.
09:43It's also obvious in this particular experiment
09:46that at least one individual showed a remarkable development
09:50of his ability to track in on his ESP power.
09:54It is possible that ESP's skill is like musical ability,
10:04something that most normal people can perfect with study and practice.
10:09Certainly, there are young virtuosos in ESP just as there are in music.
10:14Performances by ESP virtuosos, if indeed that's what they are,
10:24attract a lot of attention.
10:27Public acceptance of ESP and other psychic phenomena appears to be increasing.
10:33Behavior that once got people burned at the stake.
10:35Researchers include ESP, among other expressions of psychic power,
10:44like the professed ability of some to bend metal with their minds.
10:49My son Christopher here, seated in front of you,
10:53is going to be the one that primarily...
10:54Dr. Lawrence Kennedy uses spoon bending to illustrate the power
10:59he believes everyone can be trained to use.
11:03We're using an energy that surrounds this planet
11:06that's here for all of us to use.
11:08This is coming from a source that you've all been trained to use.
11:13Everybody can do this phenomenon.
11:15It feels like one of those plastic swivel sticks, as I started to say,
11:22that has been heated over a candle.
11:27And...
11:27Everybody see that?
11:33Or did it happen too fast?
11:34When it goes, it goes like right now.
11:39How's yours doing, Chris, huh?
11:41You getting there?
11:41Yeah.
11:45There you go.
11:57Many investigators now believe ESP can be taught.
12:01At a farm in Afton, Virginia,
12:03a teaching experiment is about to begin.
12:06The farmhouse contains a modern electronic laboratory.
12:10It is the work of retired businessman Robert Monroe.
12:12He and assistant Nancy Honeycutt
12:15attempt to teach others how to separate mind from body.
12:20It is a feat Monroe has learned through trial and error.
12:23We're going to start off by putting the electrodes on.
12:28From this, we're reading the galvanic body response.
12:32And it gives us an indication of how relaxed you are.
12:36And then we can have some idea of how you're doing here.
12:39The experiment is designed to give people a new perspective on the power of their minds.
13:07Monroe's work is being paralleled on a somewhat larger scale nearby at the University of Virginia.
13:16At the American Institute for Psychical Research in New York,
13:23a man named Alex Tanos is about to undergo an elaborate test of his ESP powers.
13:30From an insulated cage,
13:32Tanos will try to project his mind's eye into a nearby lab,
13:37there to see an image projected on a screen.
13:40The window Tanos refers to is behind the researchers.
13:56Tanos must concentrate on seeing a symbol displayed against a randomly selected color.
14:01Tanos' unusual powers are the product of long study and training at several scientific institutions.
14:17The University of California's Davis campus near Sacramento.
14:30Here, as elsewhere, ESP is undergoing increasing scientific scrutiny.
14:36Dr. Charles Tart is a psychologist.
14:43ESP is really the name for a paradox.
14:45It means something happens, information gets transmitted,
14:49and we don't know how it gets there,
14:51and we think it shouldn't get there,
14:52given the way we understand the physical universe.
14:55I'd like to be able to say it's a certain kind of energy,
14:58but we can't say that.
15:00We don't know enough about it.
15:01What we have to do is start where other sciences started in their infancy
15:05is simply observe what happens
15:07and hope we can find some regularities that will do it.
15:11The major point of my research is to start with college students,
15:15find those who have some latent ability to use ESP,
15:19and train them so they can use it strongly and regularly.
15:22That's what it's all about.
15:24Dr. Tart has chosen Karen Kamastia for an exhaustive battery of tests.
15:30This is the 10-choice ESP trainer that you're going to work out on today.
15:36What it basically is is 10 different options.
15:39I'm going to go off in the next room in a few minutes,
15:42and I will randomly select one of these to be the target
15:46and try to send it to you.
15:48When I do, the green light will come on so you'll know I'm sending.
15:51What you want to do is do whatever feels right inside you
15:55to try and get an ESP impression,
15:57and when you've got it, push the button of what you think it is.
16:02Now, it makes it easier for me to send
16:05if you kind of run your hand around
16:08so I get an idea of when you're close and when you're not.
16:12Okay?
16:12And then once you push it,
16:14whatever the right one was,
16:16it'll light up in the circle,
16:18and you'll be able to tell whether you were right or wrong
16:21and why you were right or wrong and just how
16:23so you'll have a chance to learn ESP.
16:25Okay?
16:26Mm-hmm.
16:27This TV camera is what gives me that ability to see what you're doing.
16:32This is the inside of the sender's chamber,
16:35and this is the TV screen that shows the receiver's panel.
16:41She doesn't have her hand on it yet
16:43because we haven't actually started the trial.
16:45You can see we have basically an identical panel here
16:48that the sender can concentrate on,
16:50and to actually start the ESP sending,
16:53I push this lever to choose and load,
16:57which randomly selects a number.
16:58I have nothing to do with it.
16:59It's done electronically.
17:01And then when I pull the present lever,
17:04the machine has randomly chosen target five.
17:06You can see that Karen's seen the ready light come on
17:09and is now beginning to move her hand around,
17:13and when she gets close to number five,
17:16I'm going to try to tell her that's it.
17:18This is the time for her to make a choice.
17:20And when she makes that choice,
17:22it's going to be recorded automatically on a typewriter.
17:25There she...
17:25Now she paused over, but then she went on.
17:30Now she's closed.
17:31Come on, come on.
17:32Hit it, Karen.
17:33Oh.
17:36Karen misses.
17:44The typewriter automatically records her selection
17:46and the time she took to make it.
18:01What I'm trying to do is work on a theory
18:03that says you learn anything by trying
18:06and seeing whether you succeed or fail.
18:08But you've got to know immediately
18:09so you can associate what your internal mental state is
18:13with whether or not you succeed or fail.
18:16I was going to do that one too.
18:19What I've been trying to do in research
18:21is give people immediate feedback
18:22as to whether they're right or wrong
18:24as they go through an ESP task
18:26so they can learn what goes with being right,
18:29what goes with being wrong,
18:31and then change their strategy
18:32so when they start feeling those things
18:34that go with being right,
18:35they'll respond.
18:36And when they feel the things
18:37that go with being wrong,
18:39they'll wait or try to change their internal state.
18:42This, I hope, will be a key to better,
18:44more reliable ESP.
18:46Most scientific thinking today about the brain
19:07assumes that basically consciousness
19:10is nothing but brain activity.
19:12All your loves, your fears, your hopes,
19:16everything that matters to you
19:18eventually comes down to nothing
19:20but electrical and chemical impulses in the brain.
19:23And I think that's in many ways a true view.
19:26The brain is certainly important,
19:28but also a distressing view
19:29because it leaves out what we might call
19:31the spiritual dimension of man.
19:34Now, my research is aimed at finding out
19:36whether that spiritual dimension really exists.
19:40Is the brain really nothing but a blown-up computer
19:44of the sort anyone can buy now,
19:46just many orders of magnitude more complex?
19:49Or is ESP that something extra
19:51that people have talked about?
19:53The village of Tiahuanaco, Bolivia.
20:14It is an old village,
20:16but the strange stone figures that watch over it
20:19are older still.
20:20Karen Getzla is a psychic.
20:24She has traveled all this way
20:25from the campus of Duke University
20:27to help unravel the mystery of the stones.
20:32Explorer David Zink has sent for her.
20:40Karen is considered something of a mystery herself.
20:43Investigators at Duke University
20:45have been baffled by the strength of her ESP power.
20:48She feels that the same kind of ESP power
20:52is evident in the debris of Tiahuanaco.
20:56Karen believes that the mysterious architects
20:58of these ruins had psychic abilities
21:00beyond the reach of modern men.
21:03There may be an important lesson here
21:05for we who are just beginning
21:06to explore the possibilities of the mind.
21:09How could a civilization
21:11with advanced psychic skills
21:13have vanished without a trace?
21:15There's energy up here
21:16and it's a nice clear line coming up.
21:20And I can't believe that it would just
21:22be coming off of a couple of dumb pieces.
21:25Where's the main energy coming from?
21:28It's in a really clear line.
21:30Back towards Tiahuanaco?
21:31Back towards Tiahuanaco.
21:33But it's in the ground, I think.
21:35I wish they could do some...
21:38I had a shovel.
21:38Karen's psychic impressions of Tiahuanaco
21:43lead her to think
21:45the ancients could communicate telepathically.
21:48Once their civilization reached full flower,
21:51Karen believes that instead of pushing
21:53toward new frontiers of thought,
21:55the ancients turned their minds
21:57against each other.
21:59Hopefully, we will not be so foolish.
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