Experimental CONSCIOUSNESS INTERACTIONS WITH REMOTE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS: ANOMALOUS INTENTIONALITY EFFECTS

This paper describes a 13 year long, and still continuing, series of laboratory experiments that demonsrrare that persons are able to exert direct mental inHuences upon a variety of biological systems that are simated at a distance from rhe inHuencer and shielded from all conventional informational and energetic influences. The spontaneously Hucruating activity of the target system is monirored objectively during randomly interspersed inHuence and noninfluence (control) periods while, in a distant room, a person arrempts to inHuence the system's activity in a prespecified manner using mental processes of intentionality, focused attention, and imagery of desired outcomes. The expeti mental design rules out subtle cues, recording errors, expecrancy and suggestion ("placebo") effects, artifactual reactions to external stimuli, confounding internal rhYThms, and coincidental or chance correspondences. Distantly influenced systems include: another person's electrodermal activiry, blood pressure, and muscular activiry; the spatial orientation of fish; the locomotor activity of small mam mals; and the rate of hemolysis of human red blood cells. The experiments are viewed as laboratory analogs of mental healing